Elementary Philosophy. 

PART 1. 

BEING THE SCIENCE OF REASONING 



THE ART OF CORRECT REASONING 
ACCORDING TO SCIENCE; 



LOGIC, 



CRITICALLY TREATED AND APPLIED, 

By JAMES M. WILLCOX, Ph. D. 



S 1875 ^, jo 



PHILADELPHIA : 
PORTER AND COATES, 

822 Chestnut Street. 

1875- 






TH£ USllART 

or CONQREM 

wASHiiicrroii 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

PORTER & COATES, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



MeARS & DUSENBERY, 

Sttreotypers. 



Sherman & Co., 
Printers. 



^ 



DEDICATION. 



To the American, people, who claim to be the em- 
bodiment of human progress in what is great and 
good, and the depositary of a stupendous ** manifest 
destiny," this work is respectfully inscribed. 

God grant your aspirations to be substantially and 
rightly founded ; and, if so, may He point out unmis- 
takably the whereabouts of the proper foundation ! 
As an instrument in His hands, the author desires to 
assume and do his part ; and, in the pursuance of that 
self-imposed duty, he has, amidst many cares of an 
active business life (which fact may well be a valid 
apology for many imperfections), collated the results 
of a long study of Christian Philosophy, which are 
herein submitted to you, with the assurance that a 
departure from, or non-conformity to, the principles 
of Christian Philosophy, will work disaster and 
humiliation instead of prosperity and fame. 

We have all that could be asked of Nature for the 
realization of our hopes in time ; ample territory in a 
double continent; geographical position between the 
eastern and western extremes of the Old World ; all 

(iii) 



IV DEDICATION. 

varieties of climate and soil ; length, breadth and won- 
derful fitness of water communication ; incalculable 
resources in all minerals ; established self-government 
and an intelligent activity that is the wonder of man- 
kind. Here is an array of advantages and means such 
as heretofore the world has never seen. Are they suf- 
ficient ? Most assuredly not ; for they are all adjuncts, 
not principles. 

In days of pagan society, man was but a con- 
stituent of the state, and responsible to it alone for 
his political acts. Pagan republics, kingdoms, em- 
pires rose and fell ; for pagan virtues, philosophies 
and religions, though imposing, were but hollow 
foundations. Christianity has emancipated man from 
the thraldom of the state and made him responsible 
to God for his political acts ; has given him a political 
conscience, through which he knows the rights of, and 
feels the pressure of duty to, his countrymen and all 
mankind. The same means only that has led us 
where we are, will lead us to the end. It is a means 
above the natural reach of man, and the abandonment 
of it would throw us back upon those mere human 
means that have so often failed. 

Physical prosperity is not the highest ; physical 
strength is not the strongest ; physical wealth is not 
the most lasting. Policy is not principle; license not 
liberty; politics not government; submission not obe- 
dience ; gratification not happiness ; science not wis- 
dom ; expediency not morality; ar^d loose intellectual 
speculation is not the solid Christian Philosophy, the 



DEDICATION. V 

accurate and enlightened thought, that has withstood 
materiahstic and skeptical degradation for many cen- 
turies. The fierce assaults of these upon society have 
recently grown fiercer, their allurements more insidious 
than ever ; and where men vary and may vary as much 
as we do in theological creeds — too much so to effect 
a solid religious union — it becomes us, whose philo- 
sophic science differs less, to present a solid wall of 
Christian Philosophy in defence of our common 
Christianity. The understanding of orthodox Philo- 
sophy and the defence of fundamental Christian prin- 
ciples are the defence of our prosperity, our social 
integrity and of our children's inheritance. To the 
consideration of his fellow-citizens, then, this work is 
hopefully submitted by 

The Author. 



EXPLANATION OF THE TITLE-PAGE. 



This volume being a treatise on the elements of 
Logic, ir entitled '' The First Part of Philosophy," 
because Logic is one of the four parts, and the first, 
viz. : Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics and Physics, which 
constitute what is properly termed Philosophy. A 
sufficiently full explanation of this is reserved until 
after a better preparation of the mind to understand 
it; and it is made in ''The Division and Definition 
of Sciences," at the end of the volume. The remain- 
der of the title of the treatise can be fully understood 
only in the progress of study, but it contains the total 
comprehension of the meaning of the first science 
that ought to be studied by any one designing to 
lend himself to scientific pursuits. 



(vi) 



CONTENTS OF PART I. 



Prologue to Philosophy. Spirit of this age material, 
Physical science of to-day leads from religion, . 
General scope of Logic, Metaphysics and Ethics, 
Common conceptions of them crude and false, . 

Philosophy. Reasons for studying it. 

Aim of this ^YoRK, ..... 

Logic. How to interest the mind in it. 
Analytical and synthetical methods compared, 
Utility of Logic, . . 

Ideas. Subjective and objective. 
Apprehension. Nature of ideas. 
Ideas concrete, abstract, particular. 
Ideas sensible, intelligible, universal. 
Limitation of the human powers. 

a cause of skepticism, ..... 

Estimative power, ...... 

Observations on the brute mind. 

Scholastic terms, . . . . . . 

Ideas material and formal, .... 

Ideas universal and particular resumed. 

Genus. Species. Extension. Comprehension, 

Definition. Specific difference, . . • . 
Idea transcendental. Essentials and integrals, . 
Genetic and nominal definitions, ^ 

(vii) 



The misunderstanding of it is 

24, 25, 26 

. 26 

27, 28, 29, 30 

• 31 

• 32 
. 33 

• 34 

35,38 
. 36 
. 37 



PAGE 

. vii 

viii 

ix 



XI, xu 

xii, xiii 

15, 16, 17 

18 



23: 



19 

20 
21 
22 
24 



CONTENTS OF PART I. 



Substance, Attribute, Accident, Quality, 

Division. Conclusion of Ideas, 

Judgment. It is the second mental operation in logical order, 
Matter and form of Judgment. Motive of Judgment, 

Evidence. Ultimate criterion of truth, . 

Consciousness. It is the nearest evidence to the mind. 
Consciousness immediate and mediate. 

External Senses. Their evidence subordinate, 

Different spheres of Intellect and Sense. 

Proper sphere of the senses' evidence determined, 

Memory. Its evidence, ...... 

Induction. Its evidence, ..... 
Its essence is law and its application discerned, . 
Its basis is design and not blind force, 

Bacon. He was not the author of induction, . 

Reason. Its evidence, ...... 

Authority. Testimony. Their nature and evidence. 
Certainty and Belief. Difference between them. 
Certainty is one. Evidence has degrees and qualifications, 
Review of evidences in order of excellence. 

Faith. Its evidence Divine veracity, 
Why men differ much in creeds. 

Intrinsic Evidence, . » • 

Synthetic and analytic judgments, . • 



Principle of Contradiction, 

Judgment and Will direct each other. 



Propositions. Their nature, . 
Propositions divided according to matter and form. 
Propositions affirmative and negative. 
Same simple and compouifd, complex and incom] 
implicit, ...... 

Same contrary and contradictory, categorical and hypothetical, 

(viii) 



PAGE 
38,39 

. 40 

. 41 
. 42 

. 43 



. 44 

. 45 

46, 48, 49 

. 47 
. 50 

. 50 



. 51 

. 52 
53, 54 

. 55 
. 57 
58,60 

. 59 
60, 62 
. 63 

. 64 
65, 66, 67 

. 67 
68, 69 



. 70 
. 71 

. 72 
73,74 
. 75 
plex, explicit and 

76 
77 



CONTENTS OF PART I. 



PAGB 

Reasoning. Syllogism. Vindication of syllogism, . . 78 
Premises, Conclusion, Consequence. Terms, . . . .81 

Syllogistic symbol, ......... 82 

Eight rules for syllogism, ........ 83 

Explanation of first rule, ....... 84, 85 

Explanation of third and fourth rules, .... 86, 87 

Analysis of Middle Term, ...... ^^j^ ^^ 

Quantitive syllogisms. Numerical terms, . . . , .89 

Explanation of sixth and seventh rules, .... 90, 91 

Equivocal and ambiguous syllogisms, .... 92, 93 

Logic not to be confused with its subordinate sciences, . . 94 

Enthymeme. Sorites. Dilemma, ..... 95, 96 

Sophism. Various sophisms, ..... 97, 98, 99 

Observations on the general plan, ...... 100 

Division and Definition of Sciences. Containing definitions 
of Logic, Philosophy, ^Metaphysics, Psychology and Ideology. 
Also, division of Philosophy into Objective and Subjective, with 
critical examination of their merits and claims, . . . 102 



(ix) 



PROLOGUE. 



" The noblest study of mankind is Man." 

These are the words of a philosophic poet, and, if 
true, they behe the spirit of this age we live in, whose 
absorbing study is to create and multiply man's wants 
and to gratify them ; not to adequately understand 
the essentials, and the destiny these point to, of man 
himself If the poet be right, the spirit of our age is 
wrong. The would-be philosophers of the times say 
that they have studied and know man ; and they un- 
fortunately play an important part in directing him. 
They have given him much mental work to do, and 
not a proportionate mental peace and satisfaction. 
What stimulants have they given him to work ? The 
desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the 
pride of life. When these are partially satisfied (for 
they cannot be wholly so) the result is called " mate- 
rial prosperity." For this "material prosperity" hu- 
man genius and modern science are restlessly directed 
to subduing, more and more, the ancient powers of 
nature ; and the passions and yearnings of man's 
lower nature are ministered unto. Education is cer- 
tainly more diffused and most men's understandings 

(vii) 



Vlll PROLOGUE. 

are more cultivated than formerly ; but in what 
behalf? Certainly in the behalf, mainly, of his mate- 
rial, not moral, well-being. Individual wisdom or 
culture is no greater now than in the days of Solo- 
mon, of Socrates, of Cicero, of Paul or of Augustine; 
and I am not sure that the aggregate of human intel- 
lectuality is to-day greater, in proportion to numbers, 
than it was then. It is more spread out, the coat- 
ing thinner and reaching further, but clothing more 
sparely the leaders of this age than it did the giants 
who are dead, those " grand old masters whose dis- 
tant footsteps echo down the corridors of time.'* 
Pride, ambition, ostentation, greed, the love of 
novelty, luxury and style, and human honors ; these 
are the gods whose kingdom is of this world and in 
whose service the science of to-day, physical science, 
is wearing and tearing the forces and faculties of men 
without rest. How little is done for self-denial, 
humility, purity and faith and those many other 
Christian virtues v/hose service '' does not pay," and 
whose only reward here is interior peace ! 

How mysterious to them were these virtues when 
first held up to the masters of politics and of physical 
science, the pagan Romans of eighteen centuries ago ! 
And how mysterious, after the lapse of that long time, 
are they to the leading scientists of this day ! Is science 
leading to faith or doubt ; to God or from Him ? 
Does it glorify God and humble man before Him, or 
does it glorify man in his own eyes and call God to 
account for what it does not understand, or drag Him 



PROLOGUE. IX 

down to the level of blind, unreasoning force ? Does 
it seek human happiness in exteriors ; satisfaction in 
never-ending strife for the unattained ; hope in uncer- 
tainty and bliss greater than that of sweet love in 
hating and reviling whatever is opposed to it ? Cer- 
tainly, were I summoned to behold the working of 
Satanic powers on earth, it is just such signs as I 
have indicated that I would look for. The spirit of 
the age '' rages and imagines a vain thing." It has 
discovered that knowledge is power, but has not dis- 
covered the ultimate utility of the powder. 

If the noblest study of mankind be man, it is man as 
God has made him, with his intellectual, rational, affec- 
tive and moral faculties ; not the man of the materialist, 
of the skeptic, of the scientist, of the politician, of the 
soldier, of the utilitarian or of the humanitarian. It 
is man as the philosopher regards him. This is the 
noblest study of man that has been pursued for some 
thousands of years, and the noblest study of him that 
will be pursued, to the end of time. In Logic we shall 
study his perceptive and rational powers and opera- 
tions as a means of knowledge, preparatory to a 
broad philosophic view of him in his entirety. We 
shall discover in Metaphysics the nature of his ideas 
and their origin, and shall study those wonderful 
human faculties that grasp, retain, store up and order 
all knowledges attainable ; as also the nature and 
natural destiny of the human soul, the subject of them 
all. Thereafter we may, in Ethics, study man's sub- 
jection to natural moral law and its foundation ; and 



X PROLOGUE. 

in all we shall endeavor to keep in sight the utility 
of what we are doing, and to derive intellectual and 
pleasurable satisfaction from it. 

It will not do to grant as true the poet's proposition 
that '^ the noblest study of mankind is man." God 
and Infinity, and Truth and Good, as being of and 
coeternal with God, are grander and nobler studies ; 
and our noblest study after these is to know and see 
things truly, just as God knows and sees them in their 
real being, as nearly as we possibly can with our 
limited minds ; not in their mere qualities as physical 
science views them. Weight, color, hardness, affinity, 
attraction, repulsion, motion, extension, mode, form 
are all qualities, not realities ; and it is realities that 
we shall seek for in Metaphysics. 

Logic is commonly regarded as intensely dry and 
uninteresting, and as an unprofitable study. Espe- 
cially is this the case with those who know little or 
nothing about it. The same may be said of Meta- 
physics, with this addition, that the common mind, 
knowing nothing of it as a science, and not recogniz- 
ing its own metaphysical conceptions as such, believes 
it to be simply a system of incomprehensibles. 
Ethics, to uneducated minds, is a confused aggregate 
of moral particulars, modified in each by self, cir- 
cumstances and prejudices, and to such an extent that 
each individual is pretty much a casuist, determining 
cases by a code of his own. He is a partial judge in 
his own causes and in those of others, and is unable to 
locate the force of moral obligation anywhere in par- 



PROLOGUE. XI 

ticular in the entire universe. As for Philosophy, it 
is either indefinable or confused with simple science. 
As we. proceed, we shall learn, in the proper place, 
that Science is a series of systemized reasonings de- 
duced from facts or from other reasonings, through 
premises furnished by evidence or authority, and 
going back to self-evident metaphysical truths as fun- 
damental knowledge. Such truths are universal and 
eternal ; all others are to our minds discovered and 
accidental. 

Reasoning is a process of the mind and Logic 
is the science of reasoning. Human thought is 
much broader than reasoning; and all experiences, 
authorities, sciences with their elements and all eternal 
metaphysical truths are correlated within its realm, 
the realm of Philosophy, which is the science of that 
human thought which contains all human knowledges. 
Philosophic wisdom is a structure built up of all 
knowledges — grand and sublime ; permanent, not of 
the present nor of the past ; and he who has it, has a 
mental abode wherein to dwell which other men have 
not and do not conceive. His quality is changed. Is 
this abode worth attaining? Every man judges of 
knowledge according to his stock of it and his 
quality ; that is, his worth as manifested to himself 
The man of inferior quality cares little for the fact 
that it is inferior ; but the man of superior quality has 
a consciousness of the fact, knows his quality to be 
that which makes him who and what he is, and would 
suffer any other loss whatsoever rather than that of a 



Xn PROLOGUE. 

particle of his mental excellence. This would be a 
partial destruction of himself, and every normal na- 
ture recoils from self-destruction as the greatest of 
evils to it. 

This volume is intended for those only who wish to 
improve themselves mentally, to understand them- 
selves better, and who already set a value on their 
quality in the scale of existences. It will interest no 
other. To such the study of Philosophy crowns all 
other knowledges. It is a learning to look upon them 
and upon all things in a way analogous to that in 
which their Author and Creator himself looks upon 
them ; from a stand-point high above the creations 
and conceits of men, and with an eye fashioned in the 
likeness of that of God. If these reflections move in 
you desire, the desire is healthy. Go on and read, 
and I hope that progress will keep alive desire. If 
they do not, to read might be simply to waste, and the 
book would benefit you but little. 

It is not my aim to write a mere class-book — a 
book of dry nomenclature and explanations in the 
ordinary synthetic way, I wish to start with a mind 
mature in capacity, earnest in purpose and desirous to 
understand. To such I hope to make, by analysis, 
the study of mental sciences intelligible, and therefore 
interesting, in slow and short advances (a little way- 
ward as I may be drawn) along the foreground only ; 
noticing but such elements as are important for my 
purpose, and pointing out but those relations of things 
whose perception should afford mental pleasure or 



PROLOGUE. Xin 

whose knowledge will be of important utility. I ask 
your attention especially to my reservation of the 
right of waywardness, as by this I hope to afford illus- 
trations and present important reflections which our 
paths may naturally lead to, and to which the strictest 
methodical writer might object. A book can be made 
more interesting and instructive in this way, although 
not according to the established rules for class-books ; 
and meditation upon the different subjects of mental 
science is so suggestive to a trained mind of important 
reflections, that it is better they should be made by 
the author than left to the chances of each reader's 
making them for himself. In this, Philosophy has the 
right to be exceptional, for its field is full of objects, 
since it embraces everything. 

I hope we shall go far enough for most minds to 
properly appreciate themselves and for some to purge 
themselves of their conceits ; for the more we know 
the greater appears the expanse of the unknown, and 
the better we realize how small we really are in its 
presence. The ardent student will go further and will 
thirst for the scholastic Philosophy of the Middle Ages. 
He will arm himself with his little rudiments gathered 
out of this, and will there be hurled like an atom in the 
fierce dialectic contests of champions whose powers of 
abstraction were superhuman, whose thrusts of distinc- 
tion and sub-distinction went straight to every flaw, and 
whose doubly-refined mental weapons dazzled with 
their very refinement. He w^ill behold much that was 
only contest — game for the love of victory, like any 
2 



XIV PROLOGUE. 

other game ; and he will take wisdom, too, from deep 
sources, from those sublime old Doctors who evolved 
Christian Philosophy from chaos, fixed it upon eternal 
certainty and planted land-marks throughout the 
mental realm that skeptics cannot uproot, and which 
will guide Christian philosophers of all sects to the 
end of time. 



LOGIC. 



We naturally commence with Logic, by which we 
shall get a better and clearer use of our understanding 
as an aid towards all knowledge that we shall ever 
pursue. It has the repute of being dry. hard and of 
little real utility — of being a study whose end is the 
art of splitting hairs, of puzzling adversaries, of dodg- 
ing blows, of avoiding truth and of making generally 
the worse appear the better part. All this is not 
interesting to an honest mind, and Logic is too often 
made uninteresting to students. The reason is that 
it appears at first too objectless, or that its object is 
vague. Now, I hold that in Logic, as in all studies, 
if a worthy and intelligible object be presented to an 
earnest mind, interest will be aroused and an efficient 
motive for work will be supplied. The mind may 
weary in its powers, but will not weary of its work 
if the work interest it ; but a true, pleasurable interest 
cannot be felt in anything that is not understood. 
This last appears a false statement, from the known 
fact that students are thought to be most interested in 
what they are investigating. It is, however, discovery 

(15) 



l6 E L E M K N T A K Y P 11 I L O S O V II V. 

that interests them, not tlic as yet undiscovered. It 
is desire, pursuit and victory, not the unknown game, 
that excites the hunter. The game may not be known, 
but chase and hope and victory are known, and the 
satisfaction of desire is known ; and it is these that 
give excitement and pleasure. These supply the mo- 
tive and the work follows. The mind tends always to 
understanding, and is as much the subject of motive 
potency as are bodies. Present a sufficient object to 
its attention, and attention will be moved. Present 
several ideas that have relations of some kind to each 
other; those relations will be seen and a judgment 
will b^ moved and formed. Knowledge is both a 
pleasure and a thirst to the mind, and entirely occu- 
pies it plcasurably. Present, then, the object of logical 
study clearly, and a pleasurable interest will move to 
that study ; maintain its explanations and the objects 
of its several parts clear, and the pleasurable interest 
will be sustained. Arouse in any one a military spirit, 
a law spirit, a medical spirit, a gaming spirit, a logical 
spirit (all of which have their origin in an especial 
appreciation of their respective objects), and you will 
awake sufficient action in response. To a raw and 
ignorant recruit, military drill is objectless and dis- 
tasteful, although he is told that its object is victory 
over his enemies. He is ordered to lift his head, turn 
out his feet, stand erect, to place his arm stiffly by his 
side ; and he wonders what these things have to do 
with victory. He has not sufficient intelligence of 
their relations to other things to interest him. Behold, 



LOGIC. 17 

however, his comrade, a smart, ambitious youth, full 
of military intelligence, who appreciates the utility of 
drill anci knows all that it accomplishes in trial. He 
experiences an interest and pleasure in the discipline 
that is to fit him to be an accomplished soldier, and 
which is a necessary stepping-stone to distinction, 
wealth and fame. 

Scientific writers generally overlook the creation of 
an interest in their work, depending upon people to 
become their readers through an interest previously 
existing. This restricts very much the number of 
their readers. To create a love for his subject should 
be held by a scientific writer to be a prime duty; and 
subjects, great and small, are in this like men, great 
and small, that the interest will much depend upon a 
proper presentation. If, therefore, I can sufficiently 
make clear the object, aim and utility of Logic, and 
maintain them clear, the reader of thus far will con- 
tinue, pari passu^ to absorb truth. I shall make an 
effort in my new way, adding much to the mental 
labor, since the labor of generalizing is much greater 
than that of particularizing in the traditional way. 

The method will be mainly that of analysis. When a 
writer^s object is to teach science of any kind to those 
unacquainted with its rudiments, the most intelligible 
and satisfacto-ry way is to start from the clearest 
known facts ; then proceed in some manner to' the 
discovery of the unknown. The clearest known facts 
are those of common knowledge and experience, and 
from these progress (according to order of knowledge) 



l8 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

in physical sciences and in metaphysical sciences pro- 
ceeds in opposite directions. In physical sciences 
knowledge is added to knowledge of what is exterior 
to the thinker, and progress is, according to growth, 
synthetic; whereas in elementary metaphysical sci- 
ences knowledge is deduced from knowledge of what 
is interior to the thinker, and progress towards the 
unknown is, by way of decomposition, analytic. The 
synthetic method, which is proper for higher meta- 
physics, is unsatisfactory to a beginner, although 
clear to a scholar. It starts with definitions and pre- 
supposes much knowledge ; whereas the analytic 
starts with the consciousness of one's own existence, 
ideas and powers, which are, to a beginner, the first, 
strongest and most satisfactory of all knowledges. 
Proceeding from these first facts, the genesis of fur- 
ther knowledge is followed intelligibly, and under- 
standing follows understanding easily. From a study 
of the ordinary synthetic class-books of Logic and 
Metaphysics, I do not hesitate to say that an able and 
earnest beginner can make but little progress with 
them without a teacher to analyze the 'difficulties that 
constantly obstruct his way ; and I equally do not 
hesitate to say that the same beginner would follow a 
well-ordered analytic treatise intelligently and plea- 
surably, without aid. After thorough acquaintance 
with the ground acquired in this manner, Philosophy 
must grow by relations, which is by synthesis. 

In entering upon this study, you will naturally ask 
yourself why you do it at all, and I will reply for you 



LOGIC. 



19 



^ that you do so, first, in the pursuit of truth, and, 
secondly, in the pursuit of utihty. Your intellect 
seeks truth, impelled by its own nature, sponta- 
neously, just as heavy bodies seek the ground; and 
it seeks, and can seek, nothing else. It is a faculty 
whose dealing is with truth only, as that of memory 
is with the past only, as that of the eye is with light 
only, and as that of the ear is with sound only. Truth 
that interests the mind draws its action unresistingly, 
unless this be diverted by an act of the will. 

As for the utility of Logic, it is the thorough 
knowing and sharpening of your reasoning powers, 
as a means of reaching truth, avoiding error and better 
understanding any science or knowledge whatever, 
that you may wish to acquire. 

To these ends, we shall first examine the elements 
and processes of reasoning, and arrive at the art of 
deducing correct conclusions and destroying false 
ones, according to rule ; and whilst we are doing so, 
we shall look for the sources of truth themselves. 
Logic, therefore, does not end with theoretical science ; 
it is also practical ; and the dialectician becomes as 
skilled in the art of attack and defence as the trained 
swordsman. It is both a science and an art ; the 
science of reasoning and the art of correct reasoning 
according to science. It teaches the elements, nature 
and order of rational process, and how to best employ 
all in the cause of truth ; and the desire for truth'^is 
universal, for it is a reality — a possession ; whilst its 
absence is a void — a deprivation. It is a gain, and 



20 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

error is a loss. Now, to understand elaborate func- 
tions we must first know elements ; and to arrive at 
these, we will take the first step in examination by a 
grand look at the whole universe — real, possible, finite, 
infinite, temporal and eternal. 

All known things have two existences — one in 
themselves and one in the human mind, according to 
its conception of them — so grand and comprehensive 
is the human mind. The first of these is on the part 
of the object thought of, an objective existence ; the 
second is on the part of the thinking subject, a sub- 
jective existence. Something exists ; the mind thinks 
of it ; when, instantaneously, two things exist, viz. : 
the original object and the something in the mind, the 
thought of it. This thought is termed in Logic an 
idea, and the idea is the first radical of rational ope- 
ration. It is that which exists in the mind whilst the 
mind simply thinks. My own idea which exists in 
my mind can be seized by another act of thought; in 
which case it has an objective existence, whilst the 
act which seizes it is subjective. The objective is on 
the part of the known thing ; the subjective, on the 
part of the knower. That may be anything of which 
an idea may be formed ; this is only my internal ver- 
sion of it. That is passive under the activity of this. 
There is always something in the mind to think about, 
and that something is the elementary idea. In Logic 
it is not important to know the nature or origin of 
ideas, only to know them as being the simplest and 
first element of reasoning. Their nature and origin 



LOGIC. 21 

will be considered in the more advanced science of 
Metaphysics. 

It is well, however, to call your attention to the 
fact that the formation of an idea being essentially a 
human act, as distinguished from a mere animal act, 
is a compound act, as all essentially human acts are. 
We are here somewhat within the domain of Meta- 
physics, as we shall frequently be during the conside- 
ration of the different parts of Logic ; not merely 
eniditio7iis gratia, but likewise for a more complete 
understanding of the subject and for a better distin- 
guishing of logical and metaphysical conceptions. 
Man is both animal and spiritual, and performs cer- 
tain animal acts as preliminary to intellectual comple- 
tion of them. Among these is simple apprehension, 
which man, in common with other animals, performs ; 
and the intellect elaborates it into an idea. Many 
logicians term this intuition (from tiieor, to behold) ; 
but I object to this term, for the reason that simply 
beholding does not put the mind in possessio?i ; and to 
have appropriation, ownership, possession and treat- 
ment of objects by the mind is the notion which we 
form of mental action. 

The faculties which elaborate simply apprehended 
things into ideas or conceptions are frequently termed 
elaborative or discursive. The process is certainly an 
intellectual one, and it is better to be more precise and 
call the elaborative faculties intellectual faculties. The 
nature of these we shall separately consider in Meta- 
physics, and shall reduce them to two distinct pri- 



22 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

mary faculties. Let us, then, be very precise, and say 
that the first act in the order of knowledge is simple 
appi^eheitsion^ and that idea is a product of intellect. 

Several ideas may exist simultaneously in the mind. 
Indeed when a comparison is made or a judgment 
formed, they must, of necessity, coexist, in order that 
their relations be perceived along with them. Some- 
times they are perceptions of external objects, with 
their qualities of color, size, form, &c., all perceived 
together — when they are called concrete ideas ; and 
these much resemble the apprehensions that brute 
animals have. Sometimes also ideas drop off the 
qualities of things, regarding subjects as abstracted 
from their qualities ; as when you think of mankind 
generally, or vegetation generally, in which case you 
have no color, size, &c., in your mind. Such ideas 
are called abstract. One quality may be abstracted 
from the whole, or all of them from their subject; 
and such ideas also are abstract, as whiteness, hard- 
ness, smallness, virtue, vice, &c. The brute mind 
does not form abstractions ; and abstractions are 
not regarded as inherent in any particular subject, 
only in specific subjects generally. From this you 
will understand that all concrete ideas are particular, 
representing a particular object or a number of them ; 
and that most abstract ideas are universal, which 
means without regard to any number of their objects 
considered. Not all abstract ideas are universal, for 
you may have an universal idea of motio?i and a par- 
ticular idea of a body in which it inheres; in which 



LOGIC. 23 

case the idea of the motion would be abstract, but 
would become particular and not luiiversal. Some 
ideas are called sensible, because derived from the 
exterior senses — as sight, color, sound, 8z:c. ; and 
some are derived from interior memory, imagination 
or intellect, and are termed intelligible. There are, 
of course, different degrees of clearness and complete- 
ness in ideas. 

I wish now to recall your attention, in a very espe- 
cial manner, to the distinction made above between 
ideas particular and universal, as a confusion of these 
is a common source of error. Particular is anything 
short of universal, and singular you will understand 
as being a solitary part oi particular. The idea of the 
tmiversal cdSiXioX. be reached by adding and multiply- 
ing numbers, but only by abstracting for contempla- 
tion those essential attributes which are common to 
every normal individual. Any number of men of the 
whole human race, living or dead, may be spoken of 
as particular ; but when the whole race of mankind is 
thought of, you think of the attributes of man without 
a thought of individuals or numbers of them. You 
comprise in your thought not only all that exist, but 
all that ever did, will or can exist ; in short, all pos- 
sible men. If you say man is rational, you mean all 
possible men, not merely all present and past ; and 
you employ man in an universal sense. When you 
think of any genus or species of things, your idea is 
abstract and universal, because you think, first, only 
of attributes and not individuals ; and, secondly, you 



24 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

think of all possible, without limitation. All uni- 
vei'sal ideas are abstract^ but not vice versa, as we have 
recently seen. The idea of the unive7^sal is formed in 
most cases like the idea of the infinite, by denying 
limits ; and series upon series of numbers, multiplied 
indefinitely, cannot bridge the gulf that separates the 
infi7tite from the finite, or the universal possible from 
the particular. 

All objects or numbers of objects included in the 
universal are called its subjects or inferiors. 

Upon possibles no limitation in numbers can be 
placed, and nothing less than the spiritual mind of 
man can conceive the non-limitation of possibles ; 
consequently, nothing less can conceive the universal. 
Even by man such ideas as universal, eternal, infinite 
are inadequately conceived by negation, yet they are 
adequately conceived by God as the positive things 
which they are. They are in the order of His intellect, 
but not in that of ours ; and are intelligible to an ade- 
quate intelligence. 

I wish to make your understanding of this sub- 
ject and of the limitation of the human mind as 
clear as possible, because the lack of such under- 
standing has made many a skeptic and atheist by 
shaking belief in what simply is not comprehended, 
no matter how well proved. Many indeed are so 
irrational as to refuse belief to whatever is not 
made manifest through the external senses or proved 
by a priori demonstration, which is like mathematical 
equations. It requires but a poor logician to perceive 



LOGIC. 25 

that, although a thing be not understood or proved 
by the senses or a priori, it may nevertheless exist ; 
yet the skeptic does not rise to this logic. The skep- 
tical or atheistic mind is negative, and believes only 
what is easy of belief, what is so easily demonstrated 
that the mind can rest comfortably and easily, and, as 
it were, seeing by sense what it believes. This is a 
very material mind, and one that cannot rise to a 
belief in anything whose demonstration excludes all 
intellectual doubt, yet which is not proved like a 
mathematical conclusion. This is simply absurd and 
unworthy of the human intellect. God has so consti- 
tuted us, according to His inscrutable design, that 
superior minds reach a belief in Him through reason 
only perhaps ; the mass of mankind through the con- 
cert of all the faculties ; but, no matter how, it is 
always through sufficient light for that purpose ; and 
to bury that light in negative darkness is, like the 
burying of the talent, a most serious dereliction. 
Belief, however, in the infinite is not the understand- 
ing of it ; and the most towering intellect is infinitely 
short of such understanding, because itself is finite. 
It seems easy to comprehend that everything which 
acts must act according to its nature ; that its acts are 
limited by its nature ; that they are qualified and 
determined by it, and that they must be in the same 
order as that nature, absolutely incapable of evei 
going above or outside of it. Sight is in the same 
order as the eye ; sound in the samic as the ear ; taste 
in the same as the tongue. The eye cannot hear, nor 



26 ELEMENTARY P H J L O S O P H Y. 

the ear see, nor can the tongue see or hear. The 
idea is absurd and monstrous even to the skeptic. 
Let him, then, make an effort of intelligence, and 
reflect that sense is in the order of the oj^ganic, ma- 
terial and particular ; intellect in the order of the 
spiritual^ abstract and universal ; that both are finite, 
and that their acts cannot go beyond the order of the 
finite. Nothing whatever that is finite can by act 
reach the idea of the infinite, or become an integral 
part of it, or approach it, or do anything further than 
know that it exists, infinite and perfect in every way 
that the mind can conceive, and in an infinity of ways 
that the mind cannot, and never can, conceive. When 
the skeptic's grovelling mind can awake to the per- 
ception that its powers are limited ; that there is a 
region of existence beyond them, and, shaking off 
dull and material sense, with its yearning to see and 
feel, shall rise into pure intelligence, he will under- 
stand, not the infinite, but that the infinite exists 
infinitely. 

The finite mind of man stops very far short of 
infinity, and the estimative power of his senses is soon 
exhausted. The Almighty has set a lesson in the 
stars, as though to lift the skeptical mind from apathy 
and the caresses of sense that beguile it. The im- 
measurable Universe is visibly spread out, and dis- 
tances inconceivable are made manifest to human 
vision. How much more inconceivable are they 
when the power of vision is multiplied by telescopic 
powers, and nebular systems in embryo appear in the 



LOGIC. 27 

remotest depths like vast spectres among the Suns! 
The astronomer, with his highly cultivated sense of 
size and distance, is borne so far in his contemplation 
of them that all estimation ceases ; that "fancy droops, 
and thought, astonished/' leaves sense behind and 
pursues with intellect and abstraction alone. He 
knows that there are existences beyond sense and 
estimation^ beyond conception and limitation, by evi- 
dence of induction, as we, by evidences'of many kinds, 
know the existence of an infinite first cause — of God. 

How pitiable is the condition of the skeptical mind, 
incapable of making progress, stationary in doubt, 
and deteriorating in absolute stagnation! 

You will observe that I have used freely my 
reserved right of going aside ; but the diversion 
seemed natural, and I hope it is not without profit. 

I think it well to here recall to your minds the dis- 
tinction made between \}i\^ particular 'd.wdi the universal^ 
to more deeply impress this important distinction, and 
to point out that herein lies the principal difference 
between the human and the brute mind. Many philo- 
sophers maintain that the brute mind is entirely ma- 
terial, the result of organism only, merely passive 
under the action of whatever moves the senses, imagi- 
nation and memory. According to this view, it would 
be simply moved by impulses, its will be constrained 
by appetites, desires and passions, without ever being 
free. The deductions from this view are according to 
sound philosophy, because without intellect there is 
no freedom of will ; but I cannot admit the entire ma- 



28 ELEMENTARYPHILOSOPHY. 

teriality of the brute mind, and my opinion on this 
subject will be given more fully in the science of Psy- 
chology. It is sufficient here to say that the minds 
of irrational creatures differ ; some being more highly 
organized than others, and niany of their species pos- 
sessing different systems of faculties from each other. 
The highest, however, are entirely destitute of what is 
called vitellect, and they have, in consequence, no 
powers of reflecting, abstracting or generalizing, 
although possessed of some organic faculties in com- 
mon with man, among which is organic memory, 
oftentimes equal to ours. They are capable of im- 
pressions^ but not of ideas^ in the true sense of the 
word ; these being the product of the intellect acting, 
through its meditative powers, reflexly upon senti- 
ments and relations. 

Ideas are not impressions, but intellectual forms, 
mostly derived proximately or more remotely from 
them. 

We know, by general observation, that the brute 
mind perceives only the concrete and particular, the 
subject and its modes together, the individual as 
it is, without separating by analysis the individual 
from his qualities or parts; as, a person friendly, 
a person hostile, a thing loved, a thing hated, &c. 
All men may seem, to a wild animal, hostile ; but 
only seriatim, as they happen to appear; not as 
mankind, of which the animal would have no percep- 
tion, except the particular numbers of it that become 
manifest. Though comprehending an army of hunt- 



LOGIC. 29 

ers at one time, a perception of them would be con- 
crete and particular, as being short of tmiversal. The 
whole scope of the brute seems to be, as to its mind, 
the perception of the concrete ; as to its will, submis- 
sion to senses and passions, which sway it without 
any free election or moral dominion ; and as to its 
acts, blind obedience to that will necessitated by appe- 
tite, love, hatred, passion and habit. No intellectual 
faculty or spiritual essence is proved to be absolutely 
necessary to explain brute mental phenomena, even 
if the mystery of them seem to persuade us to the 
supposition of spirituality. The truth of this asser- 
tion appears very clear when we reflect upon the 
wondrous mechanical, chemical, vital and solar dis- 
coveries of modern days. The infinitesimal fineness 
of chemical atoms and their diverse powers of attrac- 
tion and repulsion ; the effect of diverse vibrations of 
components of light ; the mysteries of sound, heat, 
electricity, magnetism and materia medica, with still 
subtler animal sympathies ; all go to prove that there 
may be animal powers and sensibilities much more 
recondite and refined, sufficient perhaps to explain 
the brute mind to an adequate intelligence, without 
recourse to the supposition of any spiritual essence 
whatever. 

There is a metaphysical principle, which I have 
already enunciated, and which should here apply, viz. : 
that acts and natures are concoi'dant with, and limit, 
each other. This requires that the brute, whose acts 
are particular, concrete and principally organic, should 
3 



30 ELEMNTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

have a nature principally material and organic, to 
accord with them. The human mind reflects, the 
brute does not. The first is active, the latter passive. 
Both passively receive an impression ; one passively 
allows it to go to its term, to work its way to the end 
through passions and habits, because it only transmits 
what it receives ; the other, by reflex action, turns 
upon it, arrests it, modifies it or sends it on to its 
term, as it elects. Reflection is peculiar to man, and 
through his acts we will determine his powers and his 
nature, which correspond with them. We know that, 
in common with brutes, he is material and organic ; 
but he performs certain acts entirely disproportionate 
to matter and organism, and which are entirely dif- 
ferent from results of any known or possible material 
function. They are in a different order, and one of 
them is reflection. Let us for a moment examine this. 
To reflect is to commence a new act, not to con- 
tinue one act. It is second to a primary. True it is 
that an act may rebound and take a new direction, but 
it must be sent by something. This something is a 
determining principle, which may arrest, modify or 
deflect, according to its nature, and it is the efficient 
cause of an effect produced. In man it is the exercise 
of intelligence and free will, commencing after the 
primary act is expended. The human thinking sub- 
ject is therefore both passive and initiating action. It 
has a permanent potentiality ; is a permanent cause 
either actually or potentially, capable of translation to 
effects of its own producing. Consequently it is not a 



LOGIC. 31 

mode of something, but is something in itself, a prin- 
ciple, with powers, attributes and modes of its own. 
It is, in short, a substance and a principle of action, 
which means a spirit. 

We have, through one of his simplest and most fre- 
quent acts, arrived at an incomplete idea of the nature 
of the mental man, and shall reserve the critical treat- 
ment of this subject until we can study it in connec- 
tion with the human faculties and more complex 
mental acts. It is well, however, to take a look at 
where we stand. In determining the human thinking 
soul to be a substance and a principle of action, we 
hold the solid ground between materialists^ who re- 
gard it as organic matter, and skeptics who doubt its 
reality entirely as they doubt the reality of all things 
which they do not deem proved a priori, even the 
reality of self-existence. 

Thus far we have treated only ideas, the simplest 
element of Logic, yet have we seen how inadequate 
is common language to express clearly all that we 
conceive of them. How then can it express more 
complex mental acts and the fine distinctions and deep 
thoughts of advanced Philosophy ? To aid in this the 
Schoolmen introduced into mental science new words 
for Philosophy only, and old words with new conven- 
tional meanings. These are technicalities, and, by 
familiarity with them, our understandings are sus- 
tained above the level of common language made for 
plainer things. In metaphysics, which is wholly in- 
tellectual, our senses, sensible experiences and sen- 



32 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

sible tendencies confuse us and make it hard to take 
home to us truths which we cannot, m some way, feel. 
It does not seem to be enough to exclude rational 
doubt from the result of our reasonings, but, in our 
weakness we must needs yield to sensible hesitancy 
and yearn to see and feel intellectually the truth which 
we intellectually know. This refusal to accept boldly, 
in spite of prejudice and habit, the truth from which 
the intellect has sifted all rational doubt, punishes by 
provoking doubt itself to become a habit of the mind; 
and the lower nature asserts itself over the superior. 
This is the explanation of most skepticism ; and it 
should be remembered that too much belief is not 
more irrational than too much doubt, and the nature 
which nurses it is certainly not so low as that which 
nurses the opposite. 

Among the scholastic terms introduced to distin- 
guish things are material and formal^ and they are 
applicable to ideas. The first is that which, being out- 
side, has its representation in the mind ; the latter is 
that representation according to how it is conceived 
by the mind. Thus, ivory is materially what its quali- 
ties manifest it to be ; a thing white, solid, heavy, 
hard, &c. It is formally precisely what it means ac- 
cording to the meaning actually had. It is according 
to the conception. In the mind of a carver it is stat- 
uary substance of a certain quality ; in the mind of 
a brush-maker it is brush-handle substance ; in the 
mind of a chemist it is a certain chemical compound; 



LOGIC. 33 

in the mind of a naturalist it is a weapon of offence 
and defence ; and so on. 

Haying explained the meaning of ideas as concrete 
diVid abstract, objective ?ci\A subjective^ particular 2.x\(\ U7ti- 
versal, sensible and intelligible, complete and incomplete, 
material diud formal ; I will revert once more to the 
distinction between particular and universal. This is 
done, first, to insist on a most thorough knowledge 
of the distinction as holding the highest importance 
in Logic, since any confusion here leads to dire and 
numberless errors ; and secondly, as leading directly 
to the path which we have to take in further progress 
in Logic. Bearing in mind the inadequacy of lan- 
guage to express the precisions of the mind, we must 
be always on the lookout for precise sense, in order to 
find truth and avoid error. In reasoning it is a com- 
mon fault to express the same idea at one time in an 
universal sense and at another in a particular sense ; 
and this is frequent even without change of words, 
thus: the Americans live west of the Atlantic; and, 
the Americans introduced the electric telegraph. The 
same word is used in both universal and particular 
senses ; and this confusion of the two, or of one par- 
ticular with another, is the most frequent source of 
error. It is therefore a logician's place to sift well the 
sense, to reject the ambiguous and irrelevant, and lay 
bare the clear and naked point of sense. All else is 
confusion and error. You will now learn that the dis- 
tinction which we have so much insisted on leads us 



34 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

to the conception of what is genus ^ species and defini- 
tion. 

It has been said that the universal idea embraces 
all existing and possible individuals of any series 
that have certain qualities in common. It is gen- 
eric. That is, all comprehended in it constitute a 
genus. Genus however is a relative term, relative to 
species, which are divisions of it. , The two terms are 
relative to each other. This is because many univer- 
sal ideas can be had as specific ideas or as generic 
ideas ; and that some can have certain properties in 
common which associate them in a higher universal 
idea. This is the containing of species in the superior 
geiius. 

The standard idea is the specific, and it contains 
all those attributes of a thing by which it is con- 
ceived to be what it is, and without which the thing 
could not be adequately conceived. Thus, man's dis- 
tinguishing attributes by which he is conceived are 
animality and rationality) and rational animal, man, 
is a species under the genus animal. If you specify 
animal by considering its essential attributes of vitality, 
sensibility and mobility, you make it a species under the 
generic X.^xm. of living things which comprises also the 
vegetable species. Genus is broader than species, sim- 
pler by having fewer attributes, but having greater 
extension of numbers. Species is narrower than genus 
by being more restricted in extension, but more com- 
plex in the comprehension of attributes. Extension is 
said of numbers of individuals ; and comprehension is 



LOGIC. 35 

said of numbers of attributes; Where there is more 
of one there is less of the other ; extension and compre- 
hension are in inverse ratio. 

There is always a difference that distinguishes the 
different species under one genus from each other, 
and this is called the differe?ztia ultima^ or final differ- 
ence, or specific difference. We will take, for example, 
the genus animal, which has, as species under it, the 
rational and the irrational animals ; and rational and 
hrational are specific differences. This explanation 
will inform you at once what constitutes a scientific 
definition. 

DEFINITION AND DIVISION. 

A definition is designed to so describe a thing 
that nothing else can be mistaken for it; and this 
is done by adducing always the nearest genus to 
the thing to be defined and qualifying it by the 
thing's own specific difference. Thus the nearest ^^;^?/i" 
to be found to man (if you wish to define him) would 
be either animal ox rational being ; in either of which 
cases you would qualify by the other term as 2, specific 
diffei^ence, and you would define man as a rational ani- 
mal. If we go up the ladder of genera we shall find 
that animal is a species oi living tilings ; these a species 
oi bodies ; these a species oi created things ; and these in 
fine a species of being, which is the transcendental 
idea, containing in extension everything, and in compre- 
hension only one thing, existence. 

You will gather from what is said that a scientific 



36 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

definition differs entirely from an explanation or a 
description. A thing may be explained or described 
for a long time without having a true definition upon 
which scholars can reason ; and I cannot too strongly 
urge you to attain to the precision of mind and gen- 
eralizing powers that will enable you to go forth at 
any time into the broad domain of existences, take an 
expansive view of the numberless geiiera that lie there 
enfolding their species ; with an eye that marks every 
differential tint, and defines every boundary as sharply 
as the lines upon a map. Truth is always single, and 
obscurity lies only in that which envelops it ; it is 
always clear, but only to a mind capable of perceiv- 
ing it. 

The trajtscendental can never be specific^ since there 
is nothing above it of which it can be a part. As it 
contains but one idea — existence, — and can be predi- 
cated of all things, it has no nearest genus to include 
it, and is beyond definition. Its idea is perfectly 
simple^ like the idea of one. Thus do we have a simple 
idea at each end of the category of existences — ofie 
and all, — and they are incapable of definition. 

I have said that species comprehends essential attri- 
butes ; and you must distinguish between essentials diXid 
integrals, since things cannot be specified by these. 
Animal, for instance, cannot be specified by head, arms, 
legs or other integral parts, which may, or may not, be 
wanting ; but by life, sensibility and motion, which, 
being essential, cannot be w^anting. A definitive de- 



LOGIC. 37 

scription regards only the comprehension of a thing, 
not its exteiision ; enumerates attributes, not indivi- 
duals ; and in this it is just the opposite of division^ 
which enumerates individuals and not attributes. 

The method of defining given above is by collocat- 
ing words which determine the thing defined, without 
showing the generation of its idea. Definitions, 
according to it, are synthetic, and are styled nominal, 
A definition affording the generation of the idea is 
called genetic or real. If I should say, man is a 
rational animal I find united by mental synthesis, the 
nearest genus and specific difference^ the components ; 
and I fully understand the nominal definition only by 
analysis — that is going from the woi^ds to the compo- 
nent ideas. If, however, I commence a description 
of 7nan by beginning with the elementary ideas ; and 
proceed, by showing the generation of the complex 
idea, from the ideas to the words^ I make a genetic 
definition. The process would be as follows. An ani- 
mal is an extended body endowed with life, sense and 
motion ; most of such being incapable of forming 
judgments and deducing a judgment from the agree- 
ment of two others ; which latter is a rational act. 
Some, however, are shown to be capable of such acts, 
and are rational animals — all of which are human, 
mankind, or man. 

Genetic definitions are analytic, proceeding from 
the known ideas to the unknown or not understood 
word to be defined ; whereas nominal definitions 
are synthetic, proceeding from the unknown word to 



38 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

known ideas which compose it. The analytic method 
in science commences with the known, and progresses, 
by decomposition, to the genesis of other ideas ; the 
s3/nthetic commences with nominal definitions, pro- 
gresses to axioms which are self-evident truths, and 
thence to theorems which require demonstration. In 
this manner it constructs knowledge upon knowledge 
without limit, save that determined by the nature of 
the human faculties. Euclid's geometry is according 
to strict synthesis ; and the study of anatomy is accord- 
ing to strict analysis. 

There are certain rules to be observed in defining, 
which are founded on the nature of things. A defini- 
tion must be clearer to the mind than the thing 
defined ; it must not be more, nor less, extensive, nor 
must it be negative. The reasons for the first two 
are patent, and that for the last is based upon the fact 
that from what a thing is not you can only gather 
what it is by exclusion, not by definition. 

Things are either substances, existing in themselves, 
or are qualities, inhering in something else, and their 
definitions must correspond ; definitions of substances 
being according to themselves, and those of qualities 
being according to the substances in which these 
inhere. Color is a quality, and is defined a quality of 
visible bodies, by which they deco7npose light, and reflect 
one or more of its co7npo7tent rays. 

Substance, Attribute, Accident, Quality. 

I have several times introduced substance, attribute 



LOGIC. 39 

and accident, and think it well to here explain more 
precisely what I mean, although these terms will be 
more fully developed hereafter. Substance is that 
which has an independent existence of its own, and 
does not suppose the existence of something else, of 
which it is a quality or mode. Schoolmen define it 
" id quod in se subsistit," what exists in itself In this 
it differs from both attributes and accidents, which 
require something in which to inhere. These two 
differ in this, that attributes are according to the na- 
tures of things, and necessarily result from their con- 
stitutions or essences ; as jrason in man, life in ani- 
mals, liberty in a moral being ; whilst accidents may, or 
may not, belong to their particular subjects ; and are 
without regard to the essences of their subjects, any 
further than merely being in conformity with them ; 
as 7iationality in a man, or whiteness in a horse. Attri- 
butes and accidents are both qualities of things. 

It was said that division differs from definition by 
enumerating individuals, and not attributes ; and the 
object of division is to divide a subject into its indi- 
vidual components, to avoid confusion from too many 
thoughts about its different parts at the same time. It 
is real and logical as contra-distinguished ; or essential 
and integral as contra-distinguished. If, for example, 
you divide man as a subject really you enumerate the 
real, substantial divisions of his nature ; as body and 
soul : if logically^ according to logical divisions of 
genus and species ; or other purely mental conceptions. 
If you divide the same subject essentially, you enume- 



40 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

rate the essential parts, without which the subject can- 
not be conceived ; as soul and body : if integrally^ the 
material and natural parts; as feet^ haitds^face^ &c. 

Division should be full and complete, embracing all 
the parts and no more. No one part must include 
another, and no one be equal in extent to the whole 
subject. The subject should be divided according to 
the order of nearness — the nearest first ; as substance 
into corporeal and incorporeal ; corporeal into organic 
and inorganic; organic into vegetable and animal; 
animal into irrational and rational ; and irrational into 
insect, bird, lizard, quadruped, mammal, &c. 

This treatment of the subject ideas has been longer 
than was intended, but the importance of having it 
well understood, in order to gain a fair knowledge of 
Logic, could not be overlooked ; and a second reading 
of it is recommended before going further. 



LOGIC. 41 



JUDGMENT. 

We shall now consider the mental operation which 
is second in order towards reasoning. This is judg- 
ment ; and the formation of it is so often true and so 
often false that differences m judgment always did, and 
always will, divide mankind. To learn its nature, 
therefore, and the process by which it is formed, can- 
not be other than a very interesting investigation ; 
first, in the cause of truth, and, secondly, in that of 
scientific progress. 

Judgment is defined '' an act of the mind by which 
it apprehends several ideas as agreeing or disagree- 
ing." From this you will know XhdX judgment requires 
at least three perceptions : a distinct one of each of 
the component terms, and another of the relationship 
affirmed or denied between them. Judgment is an 
act of reflection ; it is deliberate ; and therefore a mere 
concrete perception of a thing and its modes is not a 
judgment. If you see a man walking, and do not, by 
attention, distinguish the separate ideas of man and 
walking, you do not form a judgment in the matter. 
To form this you must not only perceive separately 
the ideas, but must unite or disunite them in your 
mind by a separate mental act which affirms or denies 
some relationship between them. If ng relationship 
be perceived, although it exist, no judgment is formed. 
It is clear, then, that a comparing of ideas and a per- 



42 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

ception of relation; of agreement or disagreement; sub- 
sisting between them, are both necessary to the forma- 
tion oi judginent ; and that the perception of that 
relation is really the reason why the mind acts in 
uniting or disuniting the ideas. Perception of rela- 
tions, then, is a moving power upon the mind towards 
further action, and is properly termed the motive of 
jiidgmeitt. Logicians call the motive of judgment evi- 
dence^ and this very interesting subject we shall reach 
in a short time. 

The subject of a judgment is that about which some- 
thing is affirmed or denied, and the predicate of a 
judgment is that which is affirmed or denied of the 
subject. In the judgment John loves Ja^nes^ John is 
the subject and the loving of James is the predicate. 
The subject and predicate, regarded without the link, 
are the material of judgment — the link is the fo7^m. 
Thus, in the judgment yohn loves James, John and 
the loving of James are the material, and by them- 
selves they contain no knowledge — they mean no- 
thing ; but the link which effects meaning, and affirms 
the loving, is thtforin. It is merely the construction 
of language which disguises t\iQ formality that John is 
loving James. They^r;;/, then, is in the affirmation or 
denial of the union of terms, and is contained in the 
expressions is or is 7tot. All the rest is material 
terms. 

From this it follows that a judgment may be simple, 
with only one subject and one predicate ; or complex, 
by having complex subject or predicate. Both of 



LOGIC. 43 

these may be very long arid contain many ideas, 
making a very complex judgment, of which the terms 
are united or separated by is or is not. Any thing or 
things said about the subject, which can be affirmed or 
denied by one act of the mind, is the predicate. The 
whole of the first paragraph of the Declaration of 
American Independence, in which the duty of a revolt- 
ing colony to make known to mankind its reasons for 
revolt is affirmed, constitutes one judgment through 
the synthetic unity of thought in that affirmation. 
Comparison, embracing all the ideas simultaneously, 
forms an union of them, out of which comes the men- 
tal unity of the act oi judgment. It affords the crite- 
rion or rule by which the mind discriminates or dis- 
cerns whether it should affirm or deny ; and that 
discerning moves it to one thing or the other — thus 
becoming the motive of the final mental act. 

Evidence. 

Direct evidence is the perception of relations ; indi- 
rect evidence is the knowledge of them through the 
authority of other men, or other authority which may 
be natural or supernatural. We have no knowledge 
whatever but what is derived from evidence^ direct or 
indirect. 

Evidence is properly called the ultimate criterion of 
truth subjective, or certainty; because, in last analy- 
sis it is by evidence that we judge. The last criterion 
cannot require demonstration, or it would not be really 
the last ; neither can it be extrinsic to the mind be- 



44 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

cause this would have to be tested by the internal 
principle, and it would not be last or ultimate. Sub- 
jective evidence is that which finally determines after 
objective evidence has been sifted. 

The last and nearest evidence in the mind, to move 
it to judgment, is co7tsciousness of a fact. By fact I 
mean philosophically whatever is and is made manifest 
to the mind. This proposition requires your strictest 
attention and understanding; for consciousness is a 
faculty; the revealer of all other faculties ; the revealer 
oi self to self; and the revealer to self in last analysis, 
of every evidence and every knowledge. It reveals to 
you your self-existence and all its modifications ; and 
it is by it that you know yourself to be different from 
every other self; and by its evidence you know your 
possession of every other evidence whatever. You 
never form a judgment that you do not exercise your 
faculty of consciousness. The schoolmen call it the 
sens2is intimus^ or inmost sense, because it is analogous 
to feeling, and feels, as it were, the reality of what is 
presented immediately to the soul. It makes known 
to the soul its existence, its unity, its identity, its par- 
ticular ever-varying conditions ; and, by reflection, 
the reality of its faculties and the reality of each par- 
ticular evidence ; whether this be of the senses, au- 
thority, memory or reason. 

Self-consciousness is a primary fact made known to 
us, through the self-sufficiency of God's infinite mind 
participated by us sufficiently to afford us fundamental 
certainty. It cannot be demonstrated and cannot be 



LOGIC. 45 

denied. Being self-evident, it is, like other self-evident 
facts, such as thinking, feeling, incapable of being 
proved ; since all are out of the bounds of reasoning, 
not in the sphere of its operations. 

To deny consciousness is to deny everything, be- 
cause it is universally the ultimate motive o{ judg- 
ment, the evidence of all other evidences whatever ; 
since all other evidences are perceptions of rela- 
tions, and all perceptions are revealed proximately 
by consciousness. 

We have now seen this faculty under two aspects, 
under one revealing hmnediately the particular con- 
ditions of self; under the other revealing mediately, 
that is, through the medium of other evidences, 
other facts. These mediate evidences are those of 
external sense, memory, induction, reason, testimony 
and authority. We shall now proceed to the ex- 
amination of these different species of evidence, and 
in so doing we shall be really examining all the 
sources of human knowledge. The importance there- 
fore of attentively and critically studying them I need 
not impress upon you. 

The external senses and memory are already reason- 
ably well understood by you, perhaps sufficiently so for 
their logical functions. They are two of the element- 
ary faculties, and will be more fully treated, as regards 
their natures, in Metaphysics. What we wish to 
understand in Logic is, not so much their natures, as 
their sufficiency or insufficiency to afford indubitable 
4 



46 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

proof; in other words, their functions in reaching 
truth and aiding in the process of right reasoning. 

When the senses are normal and not deceived them- 
selves, they do not, in their proper sphere, deceive us ; 
affording under proper circumstances certainty in 
natural and physical things. Their order is only the 
natural and physical, not the real or the supernatural. 
In these they are entirely out of order, the i^eal being 
in the order of intellect, and the supernatural in the 
order of authority. At the baptism of Christ, the 
Holy Spirit was present under visible form, but the 
eyes beheld only a dove. In investigating its nature 
they were out of their sphere. Again, when Christ 
appeared after his resurrection in a supernatural body 
which could pass through closed doors, the eyes saw 
the appearances of a natural body and the hand of 
Thomas felt the appearances of a natural body. To 
the senses all that appeared natural was phenomenal; 
what was real they could take no cognizance of 

These instances are given only in illustration. It 
is not the province of Logic to investigate the myste- 
ries of another science, only to show that those of the 
sciences of Theology or Metaphysics are beyond the 
reach of the senses of man. It is not necessary to 
recur to Theology to mystify our senses ; for all the 
realities of Metaphysics, many of which are clear to 
the intellect, are unrevealed to sense. The physi- 
cal order alone is apparent to external senses, and it 
comprises only qualities, not realities, of material 
things ; such as color, weight, hardness, form, taste, 



LOGIC. 47 

smell, sound, &c. The senses may report on these, but 
not on the realities in which these inhere. They are 
means to all physical knowledge, but immediately to 
no metaphysfcal knowledge whatever. The intellect 
only, through its powers of abstracting and generalizing, 
is a means to the latter. 

The Almighty is provident and economical in the 
highest degree, and has provided us with sufficient 
physical senses for physical well-being or pleasure, 
and for physical safe-guards against physical danger 
from without or within. Their daily warnings in this 
line can scarce be counted: This is in the order of 
his providence. In his economy he has confined these 
senses to a special sphere and not designed them to 
operate in a higher sphere for which he expressly 
created the intellectual faculties. If then any one, 
ignoring this order of God, looks to his senses for evi- 
dence in intellectual things ; or to his intellect for 
evidence in sensible things ; he reverses the order 
and reaches only error. A man born blind cannot 
reach the ideas of colors by intellect ; nor a man born 
deaf reach the ideas of sounds and harmony by the 
intellect ; and the rule will apply to all the other 
senses. In like manner a man born idiotic will not 
reach true reasoning by any or all the senses, no mat- 
ter how perfect he may have them. A misunder- 
standing of the system of God is not an uncommon 
source of error, by which the mind affirms that which 
is not, and denies that which is. Many atheists will not 
receive God and His grace intellectually because 



48 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

they cannot sensibly. They are simply out of order. 
God is not revealable by the evidence of senses, which 
fail to know him ; just as dark objects at night are 
not revealable by the evidence of sight. There is 
no failure of dark objects, only failure of vision. 

The external senses afford infallible testimony only 
when acting within their proper sphere, that sphere 
determined by reason. We have seen that the super- 
natural is out of their sphere ; likewise the pure intel- 
ligible ; but the sphere in which they afford infallible 
testimony is far more restricted still. It occupies but 
a small spot even in the order of the sensible. The 
most perfect eye cannot distinguish one human face 
from another at a mile's distance. The hearing, the 
taste, the smell, the feeling, are all frequently confused, 
deceived ; but the sensation such as it is, correct or 
wrong, is truthfully conveyed to the interior by normal 
senses. A sore linger may not distinguish hardness 
from softness, roughness from smoothness, warmth 
from coldness ; an eye may be color-blind, not dis- 
tinguishing several colors from each other; but the 
supplanting and spurious sensations are imposed upon 
the nervous system somewhere between the foreign 
body and the sensorium, and are faithfully delivered 
to the latter. 

The senses must be subordinate to reason or they 
give but unreliable evidence. In a natural life there 
are certain distances inside of which we are ordi- 
narily liable to natural dangers ; and certain minute dis- 



LOGIC. 49 

tances outside of which only we are so Hable. Provi- 
dence has provided us with sufficient sensible faculties 
to operate within these limits, for our natural protec- 
tion (to say nothing of rational enjoyment); and these 
limits about circumscribe the sphere of certainty in 
sensible evidence. There are factitious dangers, how- 
ever, but not natural ones, which are ordinarily liable to 
threaten us from beyond either extreme ; as the tongue 
may be touched by poison, whose action is near, with- 
out distinguishing it; and the body may be struck by 
a ball from the distance of several miles. Reason must 
then admonish us as to when we can trust the evi- 
dence of senses ; it is the higher evidence, and sense 
is subordinate to it. 

All the senses are capable of affording certainty 
when employed according to the design of their 
author and within the limits fixed by him. When 
this limit is approached, their evidence becomes un- 
certain and must be fortified by the higher one of 
reason before we trust it. This leads us to reflect 
that our mere physical existence is not the great ob- 
ject in view in the mind of the Creator; for it appears 
from the fact that the domain of the senses' certainty 
is nearly co-extensive with their importance in self pre- 
servation ; no greater. There is a realm beyond them 
which he has in view. Distance beyond the threat of 
ordinary natural dangers to us renders the eye and ear 
uncertain ; and distance too small, makes them equally 
uncertain : the telescope, the microscope, chemical an- 
alysis or reason, must compensate. The extremes of 



50 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

these distances are astronomical and chemical ; the 
mean and true distance for certainty is about where the 
efficiency of the senses in self-preservation would 
place it. The system of God extends to all our facul- 
ties. A limit proportionate to their functions in con- 
stituting man to be what he is, is placed upon all, and 
outside of that limit all is uncertain ; for the faculties 
are there out of order. How everything, exterior and 
interior, remotest and nearest, confirms the natural 
knowledge that all is systemized by one author! 
All the physical and all the mental sciences are parts 
of one universal science ; and no two things outside 
of creatures' free creations conflict. All else is order, 
and only our free will acting irrationally makes dis- 
order. 

What memory distinctly presents with circum- 
stances and time is true and certain evidence. The 
evidence is in the distinctness. What is indistinct is 
nothing at all, for it is a failure of a memorial attempt. 
An appeal from memory indistinct, to memory dis- 
tinct, is like that " from Philip drunk to Philip sober." 
In each case the appeal is from one thing to another 
thing. 

The evidence of memory depends entirely upon its 
distinctness as regards circumstances. If time, place 
and surroundings are perfectly distinct in the mind, 
their recognition as being true repetitions of the past 
can be relied upon with certainty. If these are not 
perfectly distinct there is no failure of memorial re- 



LOGIC. 51 

cognition ; only the failure of distinct ideas to be re- 
cognized. This will be more perfectly understood 
after studying the faculty of memory in Metaphysics. 

The next evidence moving to judgment is that of 
induction, and its study is one of the most interesting 
in all Philosophy. It is by inductive evidence that 
the wonderful progress of physical sciences in modern 
times has been attained ; and it is by false induction 
that physical science is constantly running into error. 
Induction is the basis of what we call scientific specula- 
tion ; which may be true or false ; and is itself, as a 
principle of truth, based upon our acknowledgment 
that design and law underlie the universe. 

Whilst a law and its application are as yet unas- 
certained by any other means inductive evidence of 
facts may be had ; but as soon as they are otherwise 
established induction ceases, because they are no longer 
supposed, but ascertained ; and deduction is had. Like 
sense and memory induction is subordinate to reason, 
and its evidence is not of the strongest kind, because 
not direct. When properly founded, induction affords 
certainty. It reasons out a law covering universally, 
and places particulars under that law; from which 
you will know that the strength of its evidence differs 
in different men and is according to the reasoning 
which places the law. 

All this will be very plain to you from the received 
definition of induction^ viz. : '* that process by which 
the mind, comparing together certain particular facts, 



52 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

rises from the knowledge of particular to that of 
general;" as when, from the knowledge that all the 
particular dogs that you have seen bark, you infer 
that all dogs bark. To induct and to infer; induction 
and inference, mean the same. From the uniformity 
of particulars you reason that there is a law, and you 
may reason correctly or incorrectly in the matter. If 
you were to watch the steamships leaving the Mersey, 
crowded with people going to America, and should 
infer that all the people of Europe are going to 
America, you would have a false induction ; but if you 
were to discern that they are emigrating according to 
a law of humanity ; were to ascertain the application 
of the law, and should infer that emigration will con- 
tinue according to that law, you would have a true 
induction. The essence of it, then, is law and its 
application discerned. From this you will understand 
that when we apply the law of cause and effect, and 
infer the existence of God from His physical laws, 
whilst atheists fail to do so ; we do not differ as to the 
existence of law, but as to the nature of it; they 
making it consist in mere blind, unreasoned uni- 
formity of particulars ; whilst we know it to be the en- 
actment of an intelligent and efficient first cause. From 
the past you can know the law that will govern the 
future before the particulars of the future exist, and 
can so reach the law-giver; but only by your know- 
ledge that intelligent order is the rule everywhere. 
This is the only link binding knowledge of the past 
to law operative in the future ; and all men, whosoever 



LOGIC. 53 

they be, possess this link, recognizing the reign of 
law and intelligent order throughout the Universe. 
All acknowledge that like caiises p^^odiice like effects 
under like circumstances^ and never an exception. 
This is an a priori truth, and leads to much induction ; 
and if men who profess atheism would reflect that 
unifonnity of particidai^s^ past, present and to be, means 
uniformity of effects, they would have to abandon their 
professions or their logic. 

There are, however, inductive truths that do not reach 
us from a priori principles, but from a constant uni- 
formity, in the aggregate, of particulars in themselves 
variable and varying; the knowledge of which unifor- 
mity is induced invincibly into every man, atheist or 
not ; and if he were not satisfied that there is an intelli- 
gent Providence sustaining natural laws, he would not 
have it. Thus is the atheist bound on either hand. 
Would he build a mill upon a stream unless he knew 
that, in the future, the uncertain winds would certainly 
blow to him and bring water to the stream's bed to re- 
place what is flowing away ? Would he sow his seed 
upon the soil, unless he knew that the rain and the heat 
and the dryness were so ordered that he would be able 
to harvest ? He may say that the wind is a constant 
force, but we know that in most latitudes most winds 
are not constant either in force, time or direction ; and 
that clouds are not constant, in moisture or in the 
meeting of cooler winds to condense and precipitate 
it. The particulars cannot be counted upon ; y^t 
their results, in so far as they constitute a part of the 



54 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

order of nature, can be counted upon as within the 
design of the Author of that order. All men base 
calculations upon, and have a certainty of, the contin- 
uation of the human race and certain other animal 
and vegetable races ; knowing that, no matter what 
particulars fail, the general will not. This is the 
knowledge of a law which cannot be blind force, and 
we prove that there is no such thing as a law of blind 
force as follows : — 

1st. There is a law, as we have seen, acknowledged 
by all. 

2d. Particulars may, and do continually, fail ; and 
any one may fail as well as another. 

3d. Since each particular, one and all, seriatim, 
could and might fail under blind law ; the actual 
failure of all would prove that there is no blind law 
or any law. 

4th. Nothing less than the preventive power of the 
Author of order could so far stay the failure as to 
give the stay the force of real law. 

5th. There always has been, is now, and will con- 
tinue to be, a stay of failure, which is acknowledged. 

Therefore there is a law which is not blind force, 
and it must be from an intelligent source. 

The subjects, however, of this law are only actions 
which flow from the nature of things, spontaneously, 
not actions of free will ; in man only his spontaneous 
modifications, not the modes that the race may assume 
in different phases of society, government, commerce, 
education or religion. The modes of brutes are 



LOGIC. 55 

according to fixed laws, but not some modes of man ; 
showing the exceptions to be owing to the exercise 
of free will. Inductive evidence leads us to the know- 
ledge of intelligence, design and law in the order of 
nature ; that is, the knowledge of God ; also to the 
knowledge of free will in man. All the particulars 
that can be counted will not evidence a law, or prove 
an uniform sequence to be a law, unless the supposi- 
tion of intelligent design be of its essence. Free acts 
prove free nature ; acts of design designing nature 
somewhere. Coordinative acts throughout the mate- 
rial universe prove coordinative nature either in it or 
in its cause ; and since such nature cannot be other 
than intelligent the intelligence must be in the cause. 
The principle that acts and natures gauge each other 
is one never to be overlooked in Philosophy. 

I have said that the whole essence of induction lies 
in law; and Lord Bacon, frequently styled ''the father 
of modern Philosophy," because he gave the greatest 
impulse to inductive reasoning, and so changed in a 
measure the current of philosophic investigation, dis- 
covered nothing new. Men had known law and prac- 
tised indtiction from time immemorial, and we all do 
it frequently every day. You scarcely ever look 
about you w^ithout inductive reasoning. As vou 
walk along the street, you see, not a row of houses, 
but a row of walls, windows, doors, &c., all so ordered 
that you see design and law, affording inductive evi- 
dence that behind the row of walls are systems of 
compartments, floors and chimneys ; in short, houses. 



56 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

Again, you see men excavating a cellar ; you rise 
from the particular to the general by your discerning 
that cellars are intended for houses ; and you infer 
that in the future a house will be built there. You 
see system ; and, by evidence as strong as the evi- 
dence of eyes, you see designing man as plainly as 
though he were before you, instead of his design. 

So is it with the workings of nature. The seasons 
succeed each other every year, and we know that 
"every year" is the order in the future as in the past. 
The motion of the earth in its orbit, in union with its 
pole's inclination to the plane of the ecliptic, is the 
cause of the seasons ; and I see in them original 
design and the Designer. Without them there would 
be no change of seasons, temperature or winds ; no 
rain, no springs, no streams nor rivers on the land ; 
only desert and death. The rain would fall from 
great heights into the ocean whence it cam^e, obedient 
to blind force, instead of filling the land with life, obe- 
dient to design. Mothers have always cared for their 
offspring, and they will continue to do so. Seeds 
have always sprouted, grown and reproduced their 
kind, and so will they continue. The designed laws 
of nature with which we are familiar are without 
number, and any one would prove God; yet the atheist 
perverts his judgment by his will and stultifies him- 
self by denying intelligent design in nature, whilst his 
whole life is a series of acts based on the certainty 
that there has been design and law; that the same 
exist, and that they will continue to exist to sustain 



LOGIC. 57 

the future. The only excuse that he has to give is 
the whinincr assertion that thinp;s are so constituted, 
not ordered. He has not reflected that "constituted" 
is a physical participle like '' ordered," not a metaphy- 
sical one ; that there is no constituted without a con- 
stitutor ; and his reply is without shape, meaning or 
semblance of proof; without any raison d'et^^e, which 
everything that is has, outside of the vagaries and 
absurdities of man's free will. 

The next evidence moving to judgment is that of 
reason^ by which conclusions are drawn from premises. 
Reason is a fact patent to the intellect, and that it 
affords certainty is a primitive truth ; yet there are 
philosophers who deny this and who endeavor to 
prove, by the certainty of reason, that reason affords no 
certaiitty. They certainly prove, by false reasoning, 
that false reasoning affords no certainty in conclusion. 
There is a paradox for the entertainment of students 
of Logic. Such philosophers argue by granting (in 
reasoning at all) all that we ask. The certainty of 
reason is reducible to the fact that the conclusion 
arrived at is identical with the premises, inasmuch as 
it is contained in them, and they contain nothing else. 
This establishes a complete identity in sense, if not in 
words, although the premises contain three ideas 
besides the nexus, whilst the conclusion contains but 
two. It is, however, the sense of the judgment that 
we deal with, not words. TJie principle of identity is 
that by which we know all mathematical equations — 
such as 2 and 2 are 4; 5 times 6 are 30, &c., and by 



S8 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

which we know generally that whatever is, is. The 
consideration of identical propositions we shall reach 
in a short time. 

The next evidences moving to judgment are autho- 
rity and the testimony of men. These two terms are 
not identical, for there may be testimony of men with- 
out authority. By the evidence of authority I mean 
the evidence, on his ipse dixit, of one authorized to 
speak, whether by his recognized jurisdiction or by 
delegation from a higher positive authority. A child 
accepts information on the authority of a parent, not 
because the parent may be a man to be trusted, but 
because it regards the source of information as supe- 
rior, by right, to its own judgment. If you regard a 
man as an apostle, a prophet ; or in any way inspired, 
delegated, or guided, by God, you accept, on his word, 
the evidence of his authority ; not because you trust 
his natural powers, but the delegated authority which 
you believe him to hold. This is quite different from 
the testimony of men, based upon laws common to 
the human race, and which we shall now consider. 

That the testimony of men affords us certain evi- 
dence, does not seem to need proof, as it is a fact 
manifest to the mind by experience. Every person is 
certain of things of which he has no knowledge 
except from the testimony of others. He knows 
them to be facts. We all know the existence of such 
cities as New York and Liverpool, and that ships 
sail regularly between them ; and our subjective cer- 
tainty is not affected by whether we have seen them 



LOGIC. 59 

or not. We know as well the prominent facts of his- 
tory : the Grecian republic, the Roman empire, the 
Crusades, Demosthenes, Cicero, Charlemagne, St. 
Austin, Henry VIII., and a host of historical events ; 
and we no more doubt these than we doubt the reality 
of what we see. The reason is that this species of 
evidence, being on the testimony of others, is based 
on the normal exercise of men's mental and moral 
faculties ; that is, it is according to the laws of man's 
being. Because the exercise is normal, it is according 
to law ; and because it is of the faculties, it is said to 
afford moral ce^iainty. This, therefore, is based me- 
diately on law, and is referred to the Creator and 
Designer of man's faculties, in final reference. 

If human testimony could not afford both subjective 
and objective certainty, the system of which man 
forms a part would be incomplete. 

It is a common thing to hear men, and even philo- 
sophers, talk of more or less certainty, as though cer- 
taijity were a compound divisible and had degrees of 
more or less. Certainty must not be confused with 
belief ; both consist in the adhesion of the mind to a 
knowledgeable object ; the former perfectly, the latter 
imperfectly. Subjective certainty is a condition of 
the mind excluding all doubt and fear of doubt; the 
less perfect belief does not exclude fear of doubt. 
When I say belief I mean it in a philosophical sense, 
not in the theological sense oi faith. If there be a 
condition of the mind which does not exclude fear of 
doubt, it does not conform to certainty ; and the 



60 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

failure is not in the condition of mind, but in the evi- 
dence which fails to move judgment as far as certainty. 
The fault which many philosophers make is in attri- 
buting to certainty the variation which resides in the 
evidence^ causing degrees of more or less strength in 
this ; consequently, degrees in adhesion of mind to 
object. Every evidence moves to a judgment of sub- 
jective certainty or fails to do so ; and it will accom- 
plish in one mind what it may fail to accomplish in 
another. Its effect is according to the constitution, 
natural or other, of the particular mind ; and in this 
the mind may be modified by habit and desire. The 
wish is often father to the mental condition. When 
the elements of evidence are apprehended as fixed, 
either in themselves or according to laws, a judgment 
of certainty should be effected ; but when they are 
mutable, the evidence is weaker, and only belief 
stronger or weaker is likely to be generated. When 
man's free will enters the combination, a study is 
made as to whether it operates in the testimony 
according to fixed laws of humanity or according to 
appetites and passions ; immutably or mutably. Even 
free will follows by necessity some fixed laws, since it 
cannot prevent man from loving his own good. The 
case is studied in the individual, and the particular 
man is measured. If appetites and passions are likely 
to rule, the elements are mutable ; and the condition 
of the mind may vacillate, reach persuasion^ or even 
belief ; not certainty. If they are apprehended as qui- 
escent, subdued, or in any way inoperative, the evi- 



LOGIC. 6l 

dence is stronger and the judgment higher towards 
certainty, perhaps reaching it. The judgment, how- 
ever, may, or may not, conform to reality; it may be 
true or false whilst the mind is in a condition exclud- 
ing doubt and the fear of doubt entirely. The more 
men unite together in testimony, the more do we 
apprehend them acting according to fixed laws of 
their being ; the more uninfluenced by perverse will ; 
therefore the greater the number the more fixed do 
we apprehend the elements of evidence to be. Thus 
do we see that a law of God underlies the certainty 
arising from the testimony of men. Most philosophers 
do not reach this conclusion, but are satisfied by 
reducing the testimony of men to the testimony of 
self, through judging of others by one's self This, 
however, is not a principle, only a rule ; and the rule 
even is less educed from the know^ledge of self than 
from the knowledge of mankind. It can be educed 
from either and is confirmed by both. 

In the pursuit of our subject of subjective certainty 
in judgment and of the characters of the different sorts 
of evidence leading to it, we saw that the nearest and 
final revealer of truth, that which presents immediately 
all truth, is consciousness. The external senses, memory 
and reason come next, as presenting their facts to con- 
sciousness. Induction, authority and testimony are 
more remote, as having their facts undergo the ordeal 
of reason before presentation. Consciousness is the 
basis of the whole structure of knowledge, and with- 
out it we would have no knowledge. Against this 
5 



62 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

true system some illogical men argue that the sole 
criterion of truth is what they call common sense, 
which is nothing else than the common consent of 
the mass of mankind. In this they argue in a vicious 
circle, for they pre-suppose the evidence of other facul- 
ties in reaching their fundamental truths ; viz., the 
existence of the mass of mankind, and the fact that 
mankind have a common consent in knowledge. The 
evidence of the senses cannot prove the existence of 
men and then be proved in turn by the consent of 
those men. When we agree to receive as evidence 
the consent of men it is because our reason finds the 
wherefore, and not because the wherefore is placed in 
us by other men. The final motive is personal. 

In the apprehension of those logicians w^ho claim 
that there are degrees and qualities in certainty the 
degree is owing to strength of evidence, and the quality 
to sort of evidence ; and they term certainty physical, 
moral or rational, accordingly as we have it from 
senses, testimony of men, or reason. We have seen, 
however, that there is but one certainty, which consists 
in adhesion of mind to object with exclusion of doubt 
and fear of it ; there is, however, physical, moral and 
rational evidence according to sense, testimony or 
reason. 

When we attain to a knowledge we naturally love 
to repose at ease and without effort in the evidence 
which affords it ; and that commonly first sought by 
man is physical evidence. This is connatural with 
our lower nature, being the evidence of the senses ; 



LOGIC. 63 

the lowest, and often the weakest, evidence ; some- 
times requiring the confirmation o{ testimo7iy or reason. 
In it intellect has no part, and the lowest type of man 
can lie and doze in it. 

The next is that of memory, which is neither sense 
nor intellect, but more analogous to sense, as it is 
partly organic. 

The next are those of induction and testimony, which 
are only partly rational, since they are also partly of 
memory and partly of sense. 

The above are the evidences with which the common 
mind is most familiar and with which it is most con- 
natural. 

A much higher evidence is that of intellect ; and of 
the intellectual what is immediately perceived is more 
easily assimilated by man than what is reaso?ied. A 
priori truths, which are axioms ; identical judgments, 
in which subject and predicate are identical ; like all 
mathematical judgments; necessary judgments, in 
which subject and predicate agree from intrinsic ne- 
cessity, and which that necessity makes universal and 
eternal ; are all frequently immediate perceptions. 

Higher and nobler than all is the evidence of pure 
deductive reason in reasoning ; which is a perception 
of truth illated from other truths ; which may be, in 
their turn, illations from further truths ; and so on ; 
climbing, step by step, to difficult heights ; where, 
though the basis be firm and the support continuous, 
the height is giddy and uncomfortable to all, and only 
bearable to the bold, earnest and conscientious seeker 



64 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

after truth. This explains why there are so many 
skeptics, and it explains all. that there is of a where- 
fore for their doubts. 

All the evidences thus far enumerated are natural. 
They are in the natural order of things. There is, 
however, an evidence of a higher order, the super- 
natural evidence oi faith ^ in religion. Here Philosophy 
touches the revelations of Theology, and we must not 
cross the boundary. Yet, as they touch we may ap- 
proach the point of contact and see, with philosophic 
eyes, the natural and the supernatural connect. We 
witness, by reason, the necessity for revelation, for the 
full development of man and society and for their 
natural welfare ; and reason confesses its own de- 
ficiency, in the past and for the future. The whole 
mind finds at last a knowledgeable object in its Creator 
to which it, by knowledge, adheres with more firm- 
ness than to any other whatever. Whether there be 
supernatural elevation of the mind in the act of faith 
is for theologians to answer. It is enough for Phi- 
losophy to say that evidence in all supernatural truths 
is Divine veracity ; and this is, to pure reason, the 
strongest of all evidences ; taking hold of the minds 
of men, learned and unlearned, as aj^<:/that cannot be 
demonstrated or contravened. We must pause here. 

It is appropriate however, here, where Philosophy 
has conducted us to its bounds, to make one solid re- 
flection as a fruit borne by the tree of knowledge that 
has grown up before us. We have seen some of 



LOGIC. 65 

man's powers and limitations- spread out before us; 
and we can better understand how appetites, passions, 
free will governing the direction of mind, and limita- 
tion of powders by nature, divide mankind on subjects 
and interests from lowest to highest, from the smallest 
temporal to the greatest eternal. These explain why 
men, with the same facts and data and the same specific 
powers of reason, arrive at conclusions so wade apart ; 
and it is rational to say that, if we were all as earnest 
in understanding the entire charge of God to men as 
many are diligent in misinterpreting it; as honest in 
seeking his intent as many are acute in making it con- 
form to their wishes ; as intelligent in it as many are 
self-deceived in it : as much in love with distinct truth as 
many are with indistinct vagaries ; with the offspring 
of God's mind as many are w-ith that of their own ; 
with learning as many are with teaching ; with simple 
reality as many are with complex fancies and conceits ; 
the world would not be so divided in its creeds and 
its consequent acts, all which affect so deeply the 
inconceivably great interests that await us all in a very 
near hereafter. The fancies and imaginings of men are 
not premises from which conclusions in reality can be 
drawn ; for, from the ideal to the real there is no 
logical illation. 

In the common, sturdy mind, with matters whereto 
it knows itself able to reach, there is a true and dis- 
tinct conception of the term real. Its derivation is 
from the Latin w^ord res^ a thing ; and its true expres- 
sion is that of actual condition on the part of the 



66 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

objective thing, as distinguished from condition that 
is conceived in subjective intelligence. It would not 
seem important, upon first thought, to explain the mean- 
ing of this word ; but when we see so frequently 
pseudo-scientists, philosophers and theologians, along 
with those who accept, without knowing better, their 
phraseology, making confusion with real^ ideal and 
fantastic ; it seems incumbent on those who under- 
take to teach exact science, whether mental or theolo- 
gical, to awake attention to the confusion, and to startle 
the minds of men with the knowledge that the forms 
they love and trust are their own creations, shadowy 
and unreal. When men are revered as teachers, 
whose habitual utterances, in most serious matters, 
are those of charming fancy, the imaginings of their 
hearers keep pace with, and often exaggerate, what 
pleases them ; crowning creations with creations under 
which plain, valuable truth may lie buried for its 
plainness. It is wholesome to repeat that, from pre- 
mises in the purely ideal^ there can be no logical 
deduction of the real as a conclusion ; and this truth 
may be applied with profit in estimating the worth of 
'^progressive" theories regarding the supernatural 
system. The system is real and the theories ideal^ 
and there is no probable conformity of them. Every 
one is apt to create for himself an image of the 
unknown of which he often thinks ; but how often 
does the real, when known, prove to conform to the 
ideal ? Not to distinguish between these, therefore, 
in small matters, is simply absurd ; but not to do so 



LOGIC. (>y 

where the gravest and most permanent interests of 
man's immortahty are concerned, is enough to make 
one tremble. The real supernatural system we cannot 
reach by means of our faculties, since we have none 
adapted to that purpose ; and their functions should 
be those of subordination. When, however, we are 
satisfied that God has revealed, we have the strongest 
evidence of the truth of His revelations in the cer- 
tainty of His veracity; and we have equal evidence 
(in His wisdom and His ability to adapt means to an 
end) that as much of the supernatural as He has 
superadded to our natural means is all-sufficient for 
His purpose; that it is enough with no superfluity; 
and that attempts of man to alter He can only regard 
as lesc vtajeste, high treason, to be jealously punished 
according to His own conception of the sin, not ours. 

There is finally a species o{ evidence by which truth 
reveals itself without proof, from the intrinsic neces- 
sity in the mind to assert or deny the agreement of 
subject and predicate. These truths are self-evident ; 
and of such are, the whole is greater than the part : like 
causes produce like effects : things that are equal to the 
same are equal to one another, &c. All axioms are 
self-evident. 

If we dismissed here the subject oiintriitsic evideitce, 
it would be a very premature dismissal of one of the 
most profound and important parts of Logic. The 
question may be put : Can any truth hold the evidence 
of itself? Can it assert itself without begging the 



68 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

question ? Some logicians maintain that no truth is 
self-evident ; and that position is as much the basis of 
serious error as is the denial of innate ideas.* The 
same necessity that was apparent to our Creator for 
innate ideas not derived from experience of sensation, 
that we might have universally the simplest generic 
elements of knowledge ; was apparent also for us to 
have a priori truths in order to have a system of know- 
ledge at all. 

Before going further, I shall draw the distinction 
between two classes of judgments, whereby the un- 
derstanding of the subject will be more clear. There 
are judgments in which the predicate is applied to the 
subject by way of addition of knowledge ; that is, in 
which the affirmation or denial of the predicate adds 
to the extent of knowledge that was possessed in the 
simple possession of the subject. These are synthetic 
judgments. There are others in which the predicate 
is identical with the subject, and in the affirmation or 
denial of which no new knowledge is added. These 
are analytic or ide^itical judgments. If I say John 
loves James ^ the affirmation of the predicate is by way 
of addition of knowledge, synthesis ; but if I say that 
2 and 2 are 4, there is no additional knowledge 

^ By innate ideas is not meant ideas born with a child and latent 
until the intellect matures ; but ideas derived from the interior, the 
nature of the intellect when competent, and not from sensations, nor 
meditation upon sensations. The question of initate ideas is much 
misunderstood, and those who have read Locke upon it are requested 
to not prejudge it conclusively. It will be treated more at length in 
Ideology. 



LOGIC. 69 

afforded in the predicate. The latter is identical with 
the subject. In the propositions given above, whole 
and greater than part are identical ; also equal to the 
same and eq7{al to 07ie anotJier are identical. All a 
/r/<?r/ judgments are identical; none of them synthetic. 
Kant affirms that some synthetic truths are a priori, 
and we shall find occasion hereafter to attempt the 
refutation of this theory. It would be in the province 
of Metaphysics, not Logic. 

Immediately-perceived identical judgments cannot 
be proved ; they are evidenced to us by consciousness 
without mediation of reason ; and are necessary to 
the intellect as metaphysical principles to which acci- 
dental knowledges must be reduced in order to pro- 
gress in science ; for without a priori principles there 
is no reducing, classifying and correlating of acci- 
dentals. 



Principle of Contradiction, 

In the proposition affirmed above, the whole is 
greater than the part, the subject and predicate can be 
interchanged, thus : what is greater than part is whole, 
Heie the subject is made predicate and the predicate 
subject, showing no synthesis, but entire identity; that 
it does not matter where they are placed, being (unlike 
those in synthesis) the same in sense. It is the same 
as to say, that which is is, and tliat which is not is not ; 
something is something and nothing is nothing ; iden- 
tity. Something and nothing cannot be predicated of 



70 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

the same thing at the same time. It is impossible 

THAT A THING BE AND NOT BE AT THE SAME TIME. This 

proposition cannot be proved, but is self-evident, and 
is called by schoolmen the principle of contradiction^ as 
it declares to be an universal and eternal principle the 
impossibility of contradiction in thought. TliQ prin- 
ciple of identity is that by which we know simply that 
that which is IS. 

From the fact that a priori truths are identical^ it 
follows that they are necessary ; that is, true by neces- 
sity, because the contrary cannot be. It follows also 
that they are universal^ without exception ; and that 
they are eteimal, without regard to time or duration ; 
and all are reducible to the pri7iciple of contradiction. 
The shortest line between two points is a straight line^ is 
a necessary truth, since it cannot be both straight and 
deviating, and the mind rejects the latter. 

All mathematical truths are reducible to the p7in~ 
ciple of contradiction^ although by a process of reason- 
ing ; and no experience of senses is required for their • 
demonstration when the data are given. 

The fundamental moral principles are reducible to 
the same. If I should say that man ought to obey 
God, I announce a truth reducible to the principle of 
contradiction, and to identical terms, thus : between 
the infinite Creator and His rational and free creatures 
there must be relations that necessitate law binding 
always upon all ; therefore man is subject to the law 
of God. The subject is bound to obey the laiv, is an 
identical proposition ; and that he cannot be subject to 



LOGIC. 71 

it and not subject to it^ is according to the principle of 
contradiction. 

Judgment is in a great measure directed and con- 
trolled by will, which determines relations for judg- 
ment ; and, on the other hand, will is controlled 
by judgment, which supplies to it motive for action. 
Each determines the other, and each would move the 
other in a never-ending, meaningless and empty circle, 
resulting in nothing certain or good, unless one at 
least were fast-anchored in some universal and eternal 
principle of knowledge, the certainty of which is the 
same as God's certainty. Such certainty is found in 
the pri7ici pies of identity and contradiction^ as evidenced 
by consciousness, and which are in man's mind the 
same that they are in the infinite wisdom of God. 
Thus are w^e, at every turn, brought face to face with 
infinity. The ultimate basis of our certainty is laid 
somewhere on it. The soul has, in some way, infinity 
as the basis of its knowledge ; yet it is finite ; and 
nothing is infinite in knowledge but God. Then must 
it have some participation of that knowledge of God 
extended by Him to it as a sufficing basis of its intel- 
lectual and moral existence. Thus closely are we 
united to Him ; and, without this participation, man 
would be an intellectual and moral failure, a waif; like 
a star let loose in the Universe, with its bulk and its 
attraction like other stars, but without initial direction 
given it by God to afford it an orbital path. 



*J2 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

The field oi Judgments is much larger than the field 
of ideas, as the number of combinations is much 
greater than that of elements. Ideas in store to be 
presented by memory are countless ; how much 
greater, then, the number of their combinations in 
judgment ! This reflection will be more fully deve- 
loped in the study of ideal and imaginative synthesis^ 
in Metaphysics. 



PROPOSITIONS. 

We have seen that the idea is the immediate matter 
oi judgment, and we shall soon see hov^ judgment is 
the immediate matter of reaso7iing. The idea is only 
the remote matter of reasoning. Idea is the simple 
radical, judgment is the compound radical, in the rea- 
soning process. A judgment is an act of the mind 
only and when it is uttered, or reduced to words, it is 
called a proposition, A proposition, therefore, is the 
utterance of judgment. 

In opening the door to propositions, we open it to a 
long array of distinctions which the schoolmen have 
made ; and, to follow it, I would have to fill pages 
with what would interest only a dialectician, as means 
to render himself expert in the art of offence and 
defence. This is not within my scope, and I shall 
enumerate only the principal and most important 
among them ; trusting that others may be deduced, 
or sought for in a more elaborately dialectic w^ork. 



LOGIC. 73 

Judgments are confined to the indicative or subjunc- 
tive mood, in expressing the formal verb, because, 
being of the mind and silent, the imperative cannot 
enter. All discourses, however, of any mood, no matter 
how small or how expressed, are propositions, or are 
reducible to them. Commands and prayers expressed 
in the imperative are reducible to them. When I say, 
go there ; do 7tot go ; come away ; I express i judg- 
ment on the part of myself, as though I were to say, 
// is my wish that you go^ do not go^ or that y ii cojne 
away : and if I pray to any one or to God, I mean it 
is my desh^e that you grant me what I ask for. 

Propositions are divided according to their matter 
and their /d?;7;^, and the matter is the subject and predi- 
cate. These latter can be particular or universal, and 
they can be either simple or compoimd. The first divi- 
sion is the most important of all, since the non-observ- 
ance of it is frequent ; and any confusion of what is 
universal with what is not ; or the confusion of one 
particular with another ; leads to the greatest of errors. 
If I say, any circle is 7'oundy all circles are round, the 
circle is round, I say the same thing in different words, 
and make an universal proposition ; but if I say, a 
circle is a ring, the proposition is particular, because 
some circles are not rings. I could not say, all circles 
are rings. The English are a powcjful nation, is uni- 
versal ; but the English conquered at Waterloo and zvere 
conquered at- Yorktozvn, expresses two particular pro- 
positions combined in a particular compound one ; 
because they were not all the English in either case. 



74 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

For the same reason, the English beheaded tknr king, 
Charles /., is particular. 

A proposition may appear universal to you and not 
to your adversary, or vice vei'sa ; in which case the 
burthen of proof rests upon the author of the proposi- 
tion ; for *' what is asserted gratis may be gratis 
denied.'' 

Co7npound propositions have either a multiple subject 
or multiple predicate; as, Peter and John are dead ; 
Peter or jfohn is dead ; Peter was disciple and apostle. 
Simple propositions have neither subject nor predicate 
multiple. 

Grammatical construction often confuses or mis- 
leads ; therefore take care first of the sense — after- 
wards of the words. 

The^^r;;^ of a judgment has been seen to consist-in 
affirmation or denial of the agreement of subject and 
predicate ; and propositions, following the form, are 
divided into affirmative and negative, accordingly 
as there is affirmation or denial. At first sight it 
seems scarcely worth while to call your attention to 
this, because it is so plain. It is worth, however, your 
close attention. 

In the affirmative proposition the predicate is 
affirmed of the subject according to the whole exten- 
sion of the subject as it is meant in the proposition. 
I speak, of course, of absolute, and not relative, pro- 
positions. Thus, if I take circle for subject, and mean 
it universally, the predicate will belong to every pos- 
sible circle. If I say a circle is round (in an universal 



LOGIC. 75 

sense of circle), the predicate roimd will belong to 
every possible circle ; but if I employ the subject in a 
particular sense, the predicate will belong to only a 
part of its extension ; thus, a circle is white. The pre- 
dicate is affirmed always according to the predicate's 
entire compj^eJiension^ but not always according to its 
entire extension. In the above example whiteness is 
predicated according to all the attributes of whiteness, 
but not according to all the extension of whiteness, 
since there are other things white besides circles. 

As for the negative proposition, it is simply the 
assertion that one thing is not another thing ; and this 
is said universally of the totality. If I say a man is 
not a brute, I do not mean that there is no part of the 
comprehension of bj^ute which can be predicated of mail, 
for they are both animals ; but I mean the totality of 
the cornpi'ehension cannot be predicated. You will, 
perceive, however, that the predicate is removed 
according to its entire extension, for there is no brute 
whatever that is a man ; and you will perceive that it 
is removed according to the whole extension of the 
subject according to the sense in which the subject is 
emplo}^ed in the proposition. If the subject be un- 
derstood as universal, the removal would be accord- 
ing to tlie whole extension of both subject and predi- 
cate ; and if the subject be understood in a restricted 
sense the removal will be according to the whole of 
that sense and the whole of the predicate's extension. 

From the above you will gather that in an universal 
negative proposition the subject and predicate are 



76 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

convertible, and that in a limited negative proposition 
they are convertible according to the limitation ; thus, 
a man is not a brute — a brute is ?iot a man — Peter is 
not a wise inan — a wise "^nan is not Peter, 

Observe, however, that in a negative proposition 
the negative particle must belong to the formal verb, 
and not to the material subject or predicate. 

Afifirmative and negative propositions may be com- 
plex or incomplex, which differ from simple and com- 
pou7td in this, that they qualify tliQ form, whilst simple 
and compound qualify the material. Peter is probably 
dead — / think Peter is alive — are propositions which 
are both simple and complex ; the simplicity affecting 
the subject and predicate, whilst the complexity 
affects the verb, rendering it of uncertain value. Pro- 
positions, therefore, can be at the same time simple 
and complex, simple and incomplex, compound and 
complex or compound and incomplex. 

Propositions are explicit when subject, predicate 
and verb are all expressed ; hnplicit when any one of 
them is implied. Languages of modern construction 
do not abound in implicit propositions, yet such ex- 
pressions as onward I halt! hush! death to tyi'ants ! 
adieu ! are specimens of them which you will readily 
understand. In ancient languages they are a common 
form of expression ; as excelsior ! Christiaiios ad leones ! 
and most of those sentences where one or more 
words are understood, contain implicit propositions. 

I must now call your attention to a class of propo- 



LOGIC. jy 

sitions that always go in pairs, and which are always, 
in some manner, opposed to each other. They are 
called co7itradicto7y when one simply contradicts suffi- 
cient of the other to render it false in any degree, 
however small; as, all animals move; one animal 
does not move. They are called cofitrary when one 
opposes the other universally; as, all animals move ; 
no animal moves. Whenever they are opposed to each 
other in any degree, not universally, they are simply 
contradictory . 

We shall conclude this list with the mention of two 
more species of propositions — the categorical and the 
hypothetical. The former is when the predicate is 
simply affirmed or denied without any condition ; the 
latter is when condition enters in such a manner that 
the truth of one part of the proposition depends upon 
the other part. The mind prescinds from the matter 
and makes a logical deduction; as, if a body is heavy 
it will fall niiless sustained. This species of proposition 
is a proper connecting link by which to pass from the 
consideration oi propositions to that of reasoning. This 
we shall do after cautioning you to study well always 
the sense of a proposition without being misled by the 
phraseology employed. The sense will always reveal 
its nature sufficiently for reasoning purposes, without 
the task of committing to memory the scholastic 
tables of propositions and their properties. The next 
step, therefore, is from the second mental operation, in 
the order of reasoning, to the third and last — reason- 
6 



78 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

ing complete. This we shall best illustrate by an 
explanation of the syllogism. 



R E A S O N I N G.— S YLLOGISM. 

I cannot approach the subject of syllogistic reason- 
ing without meeting a strong current of prejudice 
against the syllogistic form. The syllogism has been 
greatly abused in the employment of it. but it is often 
indispensable as a rule for argumentation. As a sole 
rule to be always used, it is slow and mechanical, but 
an admirable discipline ; and it will constantly deceive 
any one not thoroughly versed in the nature of its 
immediate elements — propositions. It is not singular 
in this, for any rule or scale will deceive those unac- 
quainted with it. It is too artificial a way of rea- 
soning in ordinary cases, having a tendency to check 
expansion of mind ; but as a crucible in which to test 
the validity of reasonings, it is, to the learned, invalu- 
able — almost indispensable. To the unlearned it is 
an ignis fatuus; to the dishonest charlatan it is a 
thing to be avoided ; to the sincere scholar it is a 
treasure ; and to the cause of truth it is a safe anchor 
fast in the solid rock of pure reason. I would recom- 
mend its use only as a test, and to form a habit of 
close reasoning, as I would the use of a plumb to a 
mason in building. 

Since a syllogism is simply a reasoning reduced 
to form, it is important, before proceeding with it, to 
examine critically the nature and value of the process 



LOGIC. 79 

called 7'easo7tmg. Does it afford evidence by which its 
conclusions become true judgments ? When we feel 
pleasure or pain or desire we cannot question the 
validity of our feeling, although we cannot, by any 
mental process, prove that validity. We are simply 
conscious of the internal fact. Consciousness is the 
evidence of it. So, when I reason by judging that all 
men are rational, that you are a man and that therefore 
you are rational, I simply deduce the last judgment 
from the truth of the other two as being contained in 
them ; and the validity of that deduction is likewise 
an interior fact made evident to me by the same 
faculty that evidences my pleasure, pain or desire ; by 
consciousness. No one can prove the validity of the 
reasoning process, because by proof is meant the 
result of reasoning itself; and no one can prove it or 
combat it without presupposing its validity in so doing. 
I have, in treating of evidence, said that reason affords 
the highest evidence of all. This cannot be too 
strongly impressed. Reason is always the faculty of 
last resort, and by it other evidences are tested. The 
senses often deceive, and it is reason which decides as 
to whether or not they are acting according to the 
design of their author. If I place a straw in a goblet 
half-filled with water, the sight pronounces the straw 
to be bent when it is not bent. This report is corrected 
by reason which examines the sense's evidence. So 
is it with the other faculties. Reason learns that they 
are limited, learns their limits, and is the judge of 



80 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

their evidences. It is therefore the surest of all evi- 
dences. 

Some philosophers deny to men personal reason by- 
declaring that there is but one reason in the universe, 
the infinite and eternal reason ; and that we all per- 
ceive immediately by it. If the eternal reason were 
the imm.ediate and efficient cause of our perception of 
rational deductions our intellects would be merely 
passive, and we might be only material beings. This 
is sophistry in the interest of materialis^n. We are, 
however, perfectly conscious of the activity of our 
intellects in reasoning and we take home to ourselves 
our acts as our own. It is not reason, but conscious- 
ness of self and its modes, which is founded upon 
the basis of infinite self-sufficiency ; and we have not 
a faculty the value of whose evidence is not finally 
established hy consciousness ; since this is the imme- 
diate revealer to the soul of all internal and external 
facts ; and, by an authority which is self-sufficient, it 
substantiates them to be facts. 

We will now return to the syllogism to consider its 
form and composition. It is a form of perfectly na- 
tural reasoning, and consists in deducing, as an off- 
spring, a proposition from two others in which it is 
contained. If you substitute ^V^^z/^^/^/i" iox propositions 
you will perceive that all simple reasonings are de- 
ductions of one judgment from two others framed by 
precise thought, in which it is contained ; or, to speak 
more accurately, with which it is absolutely identical 
in totality of sense. 



LOGIC. 8l 

In the uttered syllogism, the two parent proposi- 
tions are called the premises ; the offspring, the conse- 
quent or conclusion : and the formal deductive process 
the consequence. 

Each proposition has its subject and predicate, 
which are called the terms of the proposition ; and the 
propositions of the premises are called major and 
minor, accordingly as the term is major or minor term. 

The major proposition in the premises contains the 
m.ajort^xvi\ of the syllogism, and the minor proposition 
contains the minor term of the syllogism. 

We have disposed of one term of the major and one 
of the minor propositions ; and there remain one term 
of each to be disposed of These will be found to be 
alike in both propositions, common to both, and are 
called the middle term. 

The m^iddle term is related to each of the other two, 
which are called together the extremes, whilst it is the 
mean or middle. 

The major term is so called because it has greater 
extension of individuals, and the major proposition 
ought, but not necessarily, to be placed first in the 
syllogism, as expressing something oi^L genus or species 
of which the minor term is part. In the following syl- 
logism the major term is in small capitals, the minor 
in Italics, and the middle in Romans different from the 
text :— 



82 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

Men are mortal. Major proposition. 

/ am a man. Minor proposition. 

Therefore, / am mortal. Conclusion or con- 

sequent. 

The major term mortal has more extension than 
the 7ninor term /, and the minor is a part of the major. 
The major term is therefore predicated of the minor 
term in the conclusion. 

The two extremes appear in \hQ conclusion, the minor 
as subject and the major as predicate. 

The middle ter7n, Man, is compared with both 
extremes, agreeing with each, appearing in each of the 
premises, but not in the conclusion. 

When in doubt as to the major term, always look 
for ^^ predicate of the conclusion, and you have imme- 
diately the m,ajor term, and with it you determine as 
quickly the major proposition. 

The middle term must be universal in one of the 
premises, the reason for which will appear in the 
rules. 

If both the premises be categorical, the conclusion 
will be categorical', and if either of them be hypo- 
thetical, so will the conclusion be. 

After long study, experience and rigid criticism in 
dialectics^ the schoolmen have elaborated eight rules 
to be observed in framing a syllogism, the violation 
of any one of which will vitiate the whole reasoning. 



LOGIC. 83 

These are not arbitrary, but are founded on the nature 
of correct reasoning. They are as follows : — 

1. Let there be three terms in expression and in 
sense. 

2. Neither major nor minor term can be broader in 
conclusion than in premises. 

3. The middle term cannot appear in the con- 
clusion. 

4. The middle term must be, at least once, uni- 
versal. 

5. From two particular premises can come no 
conclusion. 

6. From two negative premises can come no con- 
clusion. 

7. From two affirmative premises cannot come a 
negative conclusion. 

8. The conclusion must follow the weakest part of 
the premises. 

The necessity for the first rule is, priniA facie ^ appa- 
rent, since there cannot be deduction wath the use of 
only two terms, nor with the use of four or more. If 
you call a proposition a conclusion, and see the agree- 
ment of its subject and predicate immediately, with- 
out the intervention of a third term, it is clear that 
such a proposition is simply a primitive judgment, 
and not the result of reasoning ; therefore it is not 
really a conclusion at all. When, however, the agree- 
ment of terms is not seen immediately, it is necessary, 
in order to ascertain it, to compare each one with a 



84 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

third common to both ; wherefore three terms are 
required for a syllogism. More would vitiate it. 

When a syllogism is offered, take first a general, 
comprehensive view of it ; see if it accord with your 
reason in order to fully understand it ; and then be 
certain whether or not the same sense and meaning 
of each term is preserved to the end. A mathematical 
accuracy in this is all-important. 

This first rule, however, notwithstanding its appa- 
rent simplicity, requires a more thorough study than 
the others, for the second, fourth, fifth and seventh 
are contained in it. It is very comprehensive, although 
the words ** three terms" are very simple. To say 
that there must be three terms in sense^ is to say that, 
as one term, a part cannot in one place stand for a 
whole in another ; nor one particular for another par- 
ticular ; nor what is ideal for what is real^ or vice 
versa ; nor what is common for what is technical ; nor 
comparative for absolute. Such expressions as cheap, 
dear, rare, far, high, low, &c., are always terms of 
comparison only, and are nearly always used in a par- 
ticular sense. The use of the same term in two 
senses is the use of two terms, and the syllogism, 
having too many, would be faulty. 

Observe that a syllogism is divisible into two parts, 
the premises (or antecedeni) and the conclusion ; and 
that the conclusion is the expression of what is con- 
tained in the totality of the antecedent. That must be 
just equal to this : there must be an equation com- 
plete — an identity. If one mean more or less than 



LOGIC. 85 

the other, there is no true syllogism. The identity 
of antecedent and conclusion might be called the 
fonnal identity of reason. Many logicians rest the 
formality of the syllogism in the principle that two 
things that agi'ee with the same agree with one another. 
I cannot see the truth of this universally, and do not 
deem it an identical proposition or self-evident truth. 
Equality, or agreement, of Major and Minor with 
Middle term, I do not consider, in considering a syllo- 
gism ; but the identity of antecedent with conclusion 
determines in my mind the validity. The follow^ing 
violates the first rule : — 

A horse is an animal. 
A dog is an animal. 
Therefore a horse is a dog. 

There are four terms. If animal were used univer- 
sally in the major and minor, it would be but one 
term ; but since it is particular in its sense in each 
proposition, it is twice particular, which means it is 
different in sense in the two cases. Therefore there 
are four term^ The syllogism also violates the fourth 
and fifth rules. In the following the same rules are 
also violated : — 

Money affords abundance. 

Industry affords money. 

Therefore industry affords abundance. 



86 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

The middle term is twice particular; for, in the 
major, it means much money, whilst in the minor it 
may mean but little. There are four terms. The 
following violates the second rule : — 

The Americans defraud the Indians. 
To defraud the Indians is wicked. 
Therefore the Americans are wicked. 

The major term Americans is particular in the pre- 
mises, and therefore cannot be universally understood 
in the conclusion, nor in any wider sense than in the 
premises. No more Americans are proved to be 
wicked than those who defraud the Indians. The 
following violates the third rule : — 

A horse is an animal. 

A dog is an animal. 

Therefore horses and dogs are animals. 

From the above it appears that when the third 
rule is violated there is no deduction of anything; 
therefore no sort of reasoning or syllogism at all. The 
conclusion is a simple affirmation, by summing up, of 
what are separately affirmed in the premises. The 
whole thing is a simple addition, affording as the sum 
a compound proposition. 

For violations of the fourth and fifth, see the syllo- 
gism given above, which violates the first rule. The 
violation of the fourth and fifth always violates the 



LOGIC. 87 

first, which is more comprehensively expressed. The 
fourth and fifth would therefore appear to be unneces- 
sary ; yet they are the rules most often violated in 
false reasoning ; wherefore it is well to define them as 
narrowly as possible, the more easily to keep them in 
view. 

An analysis of the fourth rule will, however, give 
you to understand better the comprehensiveaess of 
the first. The formula, let there be three terms in ex- 
pression and in sense, means that there must be three 
and no more than three ; that they must all be 
expressed and precisely conceived ; and that the ma- 
terial expression must conform to the formal mental 
conception of each term. This explanation, tho- 
roughly examined and understood, will show the 
inclusion of the fourth rule in the first, and will be 
a magic wand under which most sophisms will dis- 
solve. 

Let us now follow the genesis of the conception of 
middle term. It means an idea or judgment common 
to the major and minor propositions ; and its material 
expression may conform to its formal conception or 
not. It is \h^ formal ^\\}ci which we deal. The middle 
term may be common, according to its whole extension, 
to both propositions ; as when it is twice universal ; 
in which case there is exact coincidence. It may be 
universal in the major and particular in the minor, 
when it is common according to the whole extension 
in the minor, and no more. The excess in the major 
is not common to both. In this case there is inclu- 



88 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

sion, like a small ring in a large one. You can, how- 
ever, imagine a case in which the middle term is 
limited in both major and minor, when it is twice par- 
ticular in expression. If the extension of it be indefi- 
nite in either case, the two extensions are strangers, 
and cannot be regarded as touching each other, unless 
one be universal ; but if the extension of the middle 
term be definite in each of the premises, although not 
universal in either, they may overlap each other ; in 
which case t\\Q formal middle term is exactly coexten- 
sive with the overlapping. This only occurs with 
quantitive syllogisms. Thus, some men in the major 
and some men in the minor, are both indefinite, and 
there would be no formal middle term at all ; whilst 
ten men in each proposition might mean the same ten ; 
or parts of the two tens common. Majority, most, tzvo- 
thirds, &c., are all quantitive expressions, and more or 
less definite. If I say, all the class are studious, and 
all the class are mino7's, there is coiitcidence ; if I say, 
most of the class, or some of the class, are minors, there 
is inclusion ; and if I say, most of the class are studious, 
and most of the class are minors, there is overlapping or 
partial inclusion. Th^ formal conception of the num- 
ber of the studious that are minors will be the formal 
m-iddle term. If the middle term of the major and 
minor have neither coincidence, i^iclusion nor partial 
inclusion, there is really no formal middle term, and 
the expressed terms are two terms, in violation of the 
first rule ; since two middle with 7najor and minor 
terms make four. When, therefore, you deny a con- 



LOGIC. 89 

elusion because the middle term is twice particular, 
you really deny it, because the premises have no 
formal middle term — nothing common. In the follow- 
ing syllogism the fourth lule is violated only appa- 
rently : — 

Half the class plus one are studious. 
Half the class plus one are minors. 
Therefore at least two minors in the class are 
studious. 

The m^iddle term, half the class plus one^ in the major 
proposition, is universal in reality, for it means the 
whole of fifty-one per cent. Now the whole syllogism 
is about a personal fifty-one per cent. ; and as much of 
the /^r;;^<^/ fifty-one per cent, in the minor 2s is included 
in the same term in the major, is the formal middle 
term. This may be, according to the conception, from 
two upwards ; and the syllogism would be properly 
expressed thus : — 

Fifty-one per cent of the class are studious. 
Two or more of them are minors. 
Therefore two or more minors in the class are 
studious. 

A term that is numerical and not abstract must be 
considered as different in species, and consequently in 
sense, from any undefined repetition of it in a syllo- 
gism ; and it cannot be repeated as the same term. 



90 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

The sixth rule would seem to require no illustration, 
for, when both major and minor terms are estranged 
and removed from the middle by denial or negation, 
there is no tie, no inclusion, and no consequence ; not- 
withstanding which the following syllogism seems, at 
first sight, good, and at the same time a violation of 
the sixth rule : — 

A horse that is not broken is not safe to drive. 
A colt is not a horse that is broken. 
Therefore a colt is not safe to drive. 

There is true illation in this syllogism, for the 
knowledge that a colt is not safe to drive is deduced 
from the assertion that it is not a broken horse. A 
superfluity of nots^ however, has made it knotty, and 
there are not really and formally two negative pre- 
mises. Let us look for the middle term. So far as 
words are concerned, the two premises have no term 
common to both ; yet the validity of the conclusion 
shows that a common term exists. If we take the 
middle as it is in the major, viz. : horse that is not 
broken, the minor, to hold it, should read thus : a colt 
is a horse that is not broken ; when it shows itself to 
be affirmative. If, however, we take the middle as it 
is negatively removed in the minor, viz. : a horse that 
is broken, we find that it is not affirmed or denied in any 
way in the major, not entering into its conception. 
The minor proposition is affirmative, the negation 



LOGIC. 91 

belonging to the matter and not to the fonn; and the 
middle term is unbroken horse. The following is an 
apparent violation of the seventh rule : — 

A sin attaches to parents who neglect to train their 

children. 
I am a parent who trains his children. 
Therefore the sin does not attach to me. 

There is true illation, but not real violation of rule. 
The minor proposition, considered in itself and iso- 
lated from the syllogism, is affirmative; but, in the 
syllogism, since its sense is to remove me from among 
neglectful parents, it is negative. If the minor be 
assumed as affirmative in the syllogism, it has no 
middle term common with the 7najor ; and, if the 
middle term of the major be brought into the minor, 
viz. : 7ieglectfid parents, a negative form would have to 
be employed to give the sense in the minor, and it 
would read, / am not a parent who neglects to train his 
children. The negative conclusion then follows the 
weakest part of the premises, according to the eighth 
and last rule. The weaker part is negative as com- 
pared with affirmative, and particular as compared 
with general, or even with a more extended particular 
in which it might be contained. Affirmation cannot 
come from a negation, nor from two when they are 
separated in two separate propositions ; nor can more 
come out of less. Without further reasoning, it is 



92 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

apparent that where this rule is violated there can be 
no identity of antecedent and conclusion. 

The syllogisms given in illustration of the rules are 
simple and categorical, but all are governed by th^ 
same legislation. Always attend most strictly to the 
sense of the ideas as they are used in the propositions, 
and to the sense of the propositions as they are used 
in the syllogism. Both may differ in place from what 
they might mean in another place. Observe closely 
all propositions clothed in negation, and distinguish 
whether the negation belong to form or matter; since, 
in the latter case, they are affirmative. Distinguish 
also the nature of the matter as to whether it be abso- 
lute, relative, comparative, real or ideal ; for the same 
nature must go through the syllogism. Above all, 
watch the insidious danger of confusion of universal 
with what is not universal, and of one particular with 
another particular; since herein lies the source of 
most frequent error. 

The following syllogism is false : — 

Spirit corresponds with body. 

Body is subject to disease and decay. 

Therefore spirit is subject to disease and decay. 

The major proposition may be true, but the corres- 
pondence is according to different persons' ideas of it ; 
it is entirely ideal ; whereas the conclusion is quite 
real, being according to the same understanding in all. 



LOGIC. 93 

The proper way to reply to the major proposition is to 
distinguish' it and to deny that spirit corresponds with 
body in such a way as to be of the same nature and 
subject to the same laws ; and to say transeat to every 
other idea of correspondence as not bearing on the 
conclusion. The following syllogism is apparently 
good at first sight, and the conclusion paradoxical : — 

Rare things in Paris are dear. 

Cheap horses are rare things in Paris. 

Therefore cheap horses are dear. 

A thing is here apparently proved, by true premises, 
to be both cheap and dear at the same time. 

Before replying to this I shall ask you to remember 
an admonition recently given and to observe whether 
the terms be absolute or relative. Take also a look 
over the whole syllogism to see if it conform to your 
natural reason. The same horses cannot be worth a 
fixed sum and a less sum at the same time and place. 
The reply is to distinguish the major by denying that 
rare things in Paris are absolutely dear though they 
may be relatively so ; and to pass the minor proposi- 
tion. The conclusion must be distinguished like the 
major by denying that cheap horses are absolutely 
dear though they may be relatively so, either in Paris 
as compared with other places, or dear in Paris as 
compared with other- things. There is a variety of 
relative ideas in this syllogism calculated to confuse 
a tyro in Logic ; rare, dear, cheap, Paris as compared 
7 



94 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

with other places, and horses as compared with other 
things ; yet, by one distinction the paradox dissolves. 

We must be careful to not confuse Logic with its 
subordinate sciences. Logic furnishes the conception 
oi definition and its laws ; and it is its province, not to 
define all things definable, but to see that they are 
properly defined. Grammar and Mathematics must 
take their legislation from Logic, and are subordinate 
to it ; yet they should define their proper terms, doing 
so according to logical laws. It is sufficient for Logic 
to define its own terms, itself, and other sciences ; 
leaving these in turn, to make their specific definitions 
within their bounds. Not observing this order, some 
logicians have introduced into Logic the definitions 
of parts of speech, such as verbs, substantives, &c., 
and qualifications like nouns proper, nouns common, 
nouns qualificative, nouns distributive, nouns collec- 
tive, &c. We ought not to open this door to intrusion, 
because if we do we cannot determine when to close 
it ; and we might have to define, not only all parts of 
speech, cases, moods and tenses ; but the divisions of 
Arithmetic, Geometry, Algebra and all the Calculi, as 
well as all geometrical lines, figures and solids. It is 
logical to close the door and let each subordinate 
science formulate its own definitions logically. A 
vast number of propositions, based upon grammatical 
ideas and mathematical relations, quantities and 
figures, would otherwise demand our attention ; and 
quantitive syllogisms without number would fill up 



LOGIC. 95 

the pages of a logical treatise, making it a repository 
of riddles rather than a scientific work. 



We need not, in an elementary work, pursue the 
subject of syllogisms and follow it through a maze of 
complicated propositions and syllogistic forms as tabu- 
lated in many books on Logic. '* Hacking Logic" is 
not our purpose ; for although this may amuse a mind, 
and make it artful and acute, it will not make it wise. 
It is the overdoing of this that has brought upon the 
science the reproach of being the art of splitting hairs, 
of dodging truth, of concealing errors, and of making 
generally the worse appear the better part. It edu- 
cates an able sophist but not a profound thinker, a 
philosopher. I desire you to have a good knowledge 
of Logic and a proper estimation of the science. 

We shall pass now to the consideration of a few 
other forms of reasoning often used and often properly 
used, all of which are reducible to the syllogism. 

The enthyme^ne is most common, and is a syllogism 
in which one of the premises is not expressed, but 
understood, thus : — 

The wicked are miserable. 
Therefore they are to be pitied. 

The major proposition, all that are miserable are to 
be pitied, is understood. If we should change that 



96 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

phraseology and say, whoever is miserable^ we should 
mean it in an universal sense. 

A sorites is a series of propositions in which, 
throughout, the predicate of one is the subject of the 
next ; the predicate of the last in order being affirmed 
of the subject of the first proposition ; thus : — 

A horse is an animal. 
An animal is a living body. 
A living body is destructible. 
What is destructible is mortal. 
Therefore a horse is mortal. 

In a sorites it is evident that all the propositions 
must be universal. 

The dilemma is a compound argument, presenting 
two alternatives or horns, the truth of either of which 
proves the conclusion. The alternatives are presented 
in the form of a disjunctive proposition, whose parts 
are so related that you conclude from the whole of it 
what you would conclude from either part. The 
dilemma proposed by our Saviour to the Jews, when 
they accused Him of being an agent of Beelzebub, in 
casting out devils, is familiar to all. The argument is 
as follows : / cast out devils by the power of God or by 
that of Beelzebub. If by the power of God, I am not the 
agent of Beelzebub, If by the power of Beelzebub, I em- 
ploy it against himself Therefore in neither case am I 
his agent. 



LOGIC. 97 

From the subject of learning how to reach tlie 
truth in reasoning, we shall now pass to that of avo cl- 
ing error in reasoning, and learn some of the ways of 
sophistry. 

A sophism is defined an argiunentation hiddenly 
false ; and nearly all the world is deceived by 
sophistry. Argumentation openly false will not de- 
ceive any but those wishing to be deceived; in which 
case they wilfully refuse to consider the truth and 
habituate their minds to error for the love of it ; not 
for the love of error as error, but for the love of a 
particular thing, which thing is an error. Mankind 
are much self-deceived, but unwillingly so only by 
sophistry. It is well, then, to understand it. 

One species of sophism is called the vicious circle ; 
which is proving one thing by another which has been 
proved by the first. If I were to sa}" that the soul is 
a non-compound because it is naturally immortal, 
and afterwards argue that it is immortal because it 
is a non-compound, I would argue in a vicious circle ^ 
proving nothing. 

Another species is called begging the question ; 
which is assuming as true, in a covert way, that which 
is in question. The great philosopher Des Cartes has 
left us a memorable example of this sophism. In the 
skepticism which he assumed as to the reality of his 
existence, he fell back upon the reality of his thoughts, 
and argued : / think, therefore I exist^ The employ- 
ment of the Latin cogito^ without the pronoun which 
was truly the doubtful quantity, was calculated to 



98 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

mislead ; but the ego was understood. In the modern 
form of language the /would have been expressed, 
and would have been asserted at the start. This form 
of sophism is not at all uncommon. 

Equivocation^ in its etymology, signifies one word 
with several meanings, and consists in employing one 
word in more meanings than one. 

As equivocation regards words, ambiguity regards 
propositions, and consists in the use of the same pro- 
position in different senses. If I say, there is a higher 
than human law for ^^nan to obey, I employ an ambi- 
guity. There is a higher law for man to obey in pre- 
ference, when a right conscience requires it ; but not 
a higher law for men to strain a false conscience over, 
for the purpose of avoiding obedience to the laws of 
the land. The proposition may be understood in 
either sense, and when a question arises as to the true 
meaning the ambiguity appears. 

The sophism of separation and conjunction consists 
in deception by the use of several predicates conjoined 
in a sense different from what they would have if used 
separately ; or vice versa. The sun rises and sets, not 
according to conjunction of the predicates, both at 
once, but separately. On the other hand, the sun rises 
and shines, not separately, but conjoinedly. There- 
fore it would be sophistry to deduce that the sun can 
rise and set at the same time, or that it can rise with- 
out shining at the same time. 

Confusion of qualities consists in deception by con- 
fusing qualities essential with qualities accidental. If, 



LOGIC. 99 

from the fact that joy sometimes kills, you were to 
deduce that joy is therefore bad, you would employ a 
sophism of the above character, because it is not of 
the essence of joy to kill people. 

Ignoring the question is expressed in common lan- 
guage dodging the qnestion, and consists in avoiding 
the real issue by setting up a false one in its stead. 
If you were to deny the right of capital punishment 
by opposing the commandment Thou shalt not kill, 
you would avoid the issue of the right of society by 
substituting that of private right. 

No cause for cause consists in deception by assum- 
ing that to be a cause which only precedes without 
the relation of cause to effect. Day follows night and 
7iight follows day, therefore each is caused by the other — 
is a sophism of no cause for cause. 

False supposition consists in supposing as true a 
thing that is false, and diverting attention from the 
supposition to an argument built upon it ; as when a 
clerk, knowing that his accounts have never been 
supervised, asks a new situation and argues his fitness 
for it from the fact that no error has ever been found 
in his books. 

We have now reached the conclusion of Logic, and 
have seen, when the occasions seemed to make it 
interesting and apposite, very considerable metaphy- 
sical knowledge injected into its pages. This plan 
has answered a double purpose — first, in detracting 
from the proverbial dryness of Logic ; and secondly, 



lOO ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

in affording subjects for the application of the laws 
and principles of Logic, which we were learning. For 
this purpose I hav^e chosen matters of the gravest and 
highest importance — matters with which all thinking 
men should be familiar, and to which they ought to 
apply their highest logical science. The understand- 
ing of atheism, skepticism, the difference between the 
human and the brute mind, the unity of the universe, 
and the common source of all physical, mental, natural 
and supernatural laws, is much more important than 
that of Logic itself; and is necessary to every finished 
education. Some readers may rest satisfied here, 
without pursuing Philosophy any further; and to 
such the reflections which have been made will not 
only be useful in themselves, but will often recur to 
the mind, when in serious mood, as suggestive of 
other thoughts for meditation. This process, repeated 
and become habitual, will give the mind a philosophic 
bent, after which it will choose intellectual pleasure in 
preference to any other. 

I have not attempted to teach one science under 
cover of another, but the two concomitantly, as ger- 
mane to each other ; and if you close this little 
volume with the acquisition of more knowledge than 
is commonly gathered out of treatises on Logic, so 
much the better for you, and so much the better for 
the volume. This has left the door wide open for 
criticism. It will be styled rather an essay than a 
treatise on Logic, and its order will not be approved 
by the most methodical of teachers. A retrospect, 



LOGIC. lOI 

however, persuades me that it will be easily under- 
stood, an-d that its modicum of science is sufficient 
for an elementary course of Logic. 

The article which follows, entitled the Division a7id 
Definition of Sciences^ has not a title ad captandum^ but 
it is of the very highest importance. Therein is 
mapped out the whole general ground-work of Philo- 
sophy, w^ith its tw^o grand divisions of subjective and 
objective explained ; also the divisions and definitions 
of its principal subordinate sciences. Short as it is, 
it has cost more mental work than the whole volume 
on Logic, and is open to a higher order of criticism. 
It contains a generalization which w^as not under- 
taken without some misgiving — some wholesome 
fear; but with more of hope that a good end pro- 
posed might aid and fortify the means. 



END OF LOGIC. 



Division and Definition of Sciences. 



Early in the course of Logic we learned the pre- 
cise meanings of division and definition, but have had, 
as yet, Httle experience in the appHcation of them. It 
is important now to hold those conceptions well in 
hand, for we are about constructing a general map 
of Philosophy, with divisions and subdivisions, all of 
which ought to be carefully and accurately defined. 
We have styled Logic the first part of Philosophy; 
wherefore, before proceeding further, we should take 
a retrospective view of its whole scope, determine 
precisely what it is, and why it is a part, and the first 
pait, of Philosophy. In the treatment of it I have made 
it as simple as possible, analyzed its different parts, have 
avoided the introduction of all scholastic terms that 
could be dispensed with, and have studiously avoided 
giving any part of it a grammatical or mathematical 
character. Remembering ever the great issues of the 
age and their important bearing upon Society (to say 
nothing of their bearing upon the final destiny of indi- 
vidual men), I have taken pains to frequently step 

(102) 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. IO3 

aside to apply the dry principles of Logic to those 
issues, for the sake of interest and utility. For this I 
do not apologize to critics, being satisfied that the end 
warranted the means, and having proposed to myself 
as an end the accomplishment of good. 

We have examined some of the elements and laws 
of thought, but we do not yet know what Logic is 
until we characterize the object proposed in that 
examination, and learn the light in which its parts 
have been examined. Any logical study of the laws of 
thought, no matter how wide or narrow, could afford 
only the knowledge of logical legislation, ///r^ Logic ; 
and this is a very unsatisfying conception of Logic as 
a science, to say nothing of its exclusion of practical 
Logic entirely. A clear retrospective view should 
satisfy that we have examined the elements of mind or 
thought according to their functions in reasoning ; 
have examined the sources of knowledge possessed 
by the mind with reference to the part which they 
play in affording correct reasoning; have classified 
ideas and judgments as mediate and immediate mate- 
rial of reasoning ; and have elaborated the processes 
of dividing and defining subjects of thought, so that 
they may be distinct and unmistakable elements in the 
science whose object is correct reasoning. When we 
have studied these things in any other light than as 
elements of that science, we have gone outside of it ; 
and our sins of that character are more open to criti- 
cism than our conception of Logic as a science. 

These considerations give us the genesis of the idea 



I04 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

of Logic. It was not thought well to define it before 
learning, within its own realm, what a definition is and 
how to make one; from which you will understand 
that Logic ought to be the first of all sciences studied, 
in order that you may systemize, in any science, the 
varied informations gathered up from an infinity of 
sources ; and so reason about them with precision and 
correctness. Since therefore Logic furnishes the con- 
ceptions of division and definition and their legislation, 
it is its province to divide and define all sciences. 
We shall bear this in mind for application to the 
different sciences which we propose to study, and shall 
now let Logic commence its definitions by defining 
itself. We have just seen the genesis of its conception, 
and have experienced that it is both theoretical and 
practical ; the description therefore of it given in the 
introduction, as the science of reasoning and the art of 
correct reasoning according to science^ is its real and true 
definition. 

Logic has had to bear many definitions which have 
had their rise, either from a wrong conception of it, or 
from one that is insufficient. That which defines it as 
the science of reasoning comprehends only the theo- 
retical part, and is insufficient, although the conception 
is in the right direction. Whatever defines it as any 
other science is wrong. Some logicians define it as 
the science of the laws of thought or thinking ; but, for 
several reasons, this definition cannot stand, ist. It 
does not include the practical division of Logic at all. 
2d. The laws of thinking is too broad ; for there is much 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. IO5 

thinking (in the broad sense) done which is not in the 
order of Logic; as in simple attention^ reverie^ dreaming^ 
imaginings reinernbering^ rejoicing ^ grieving , &c., as these 
are performed by man. 3d. The lazvs of thought is much 
too broad ; for, in the received philosophic meaning of 
hmnan thought, any change or modification whatever 
of the thinking subject of which it is cofiscious, whether 
by intellect, sensation, will, or any faculty, is a thought. 

Certainly the laws of thinking or of thought, as 
developed by a study of the primary faculties in Meta- 
physics, are outside of the contemplation of Logic, 
which, as a science, deals only with mental elements 
and processes as a means to be employed in the acqui- 
sition of true knowledge. When we explain these 
elements and processes otherwise than as mental ma- 
chinery by which to acquire truth, we do not explain 
them as parts of logical science ; and when we explain 
their natures for themselves, simply to impart know- 
ledge of them for the sake of knowledge or erudition, 
we are explaining Metaphysics, not Logic. The laws 
of thought then that govern the simple operations of 
the primary faculties, without comparison of results 
for the purposes of reasoning, are metaphysical, not 
logical, laws. The subject is important, and we should 
satisfy ourselves by further investigation. 

When a mature and thoughtful mind begins the 
investigation of itself, it starts an analysis, and soon 
perceives that it can regard its activity under two 
aspects. The first of these is as a means of inquiry, 
of investigating itself and other things. It naturally 



I06 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

investigates its powers before it becomes the subject 
of its own investigation ; studies its means before the 
subject to which they are to be applied. Under this 
aspect alone it is a sufficiently rich subject to be the 
object of a systematic science. What is this science 
of thouglvt as a means? It is certainly pursued in a 
course of Philosophy, and, if it be not theoretical Logic, 
it has no name. Logical science, then, is the science of 
thought as a means. A means to what? Means sup- 
poses end. What is the end proposed by Logic ? The 
better acquisition of knowledge. Now what is know- 
ledge, and how is it obtained ? It is not apprehension, 
nor idea; nor conception, nor perception, of a sensation 
or a part of a sensation by abstraction. If you have 
only any of these and know nothing about it, you have 
no knowledge about it; and if you had only such 
things, without a mental comparison, you would have 
no knowledge at all. To feel is not to know, although 
practically nearly all sensations become known ; and, 
to know, you must have at least two ideas, and unite 
them in such a way that one shall be known about 
the other. This is judgment^ and all knowledge is 
judgment. Logic, then, is the science of acquiring 
correct judgments; and primary judgments would be 
of little utility without deductions from them. In 
science they would be but the first step, and the com- 
pletion of them would be reascming. Again, we have 
seen that judgment follows spontaneously the advent 
of eviderice^ and that all evidences (except that of 
consciousness, which is the ground of mental existence) 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. 10/ 

are subordinate to reasoning. It is, therefore, the 
science of reasoning that we pursue when we study 
mind as a means to knowledge. Reasoning, more- 
over, is the most complete operation of the mind as a 
means ; every mental element being an integral part 
of it. It is the eiitirety of mind as a means ; the 
highest and ultimate subject of logical investigation. 

The second aspect under which the mind regards 
itself is as an object of science, like any other object; 
and, thus considered, its legislation, as I have said, 
belongs, not to Logic, but to Metaphysics. 

In common with all sciences. Logic has two parts — 
the fonn and the matter. The form is the legislation, 
and this is pure Logic. When the matter, knowledge, 
is subjected to logical legislation, we have what is 
called applied Logic. Pure Logic deals only w^ith the 
laws of reasoning and its elements ; and since the 
laws are according to the nature of these elements, 
they are, like the laws of mathematics, natural and 
fixed. The laws of Society do not furnish the acts 
and conduct of men which they govern ; the laws of 
Grammar do not furnish the language ; the laws of 
Astronomy do not furnish the stars ; and, in like man- 
ner, the laws of Logic do not furnish the human 
knowledge and activity which they govern. These 
must be derived from other sources, through the im- 
mediate interposition of evidence of some sort. Pure 
Logic is, therefore, abstracted from practical applica- 
tion, and is hard and dry, like the rules of Grammar 
and Mathematics. This is why I have adopted the 



I08 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

plan of applying it frequently to interesting matter ; 
thus insuring the better understanding and remem- 
bering of it. The sources of truth, as shown in the 
article on evidence^ are really a means of acquiring 
truth ; are the ministers to the intellect in reasoning ; 
and, as such, they properly enter, as a part, into the 
science of reasoning. I have treated them in com- 
pany with judgment^ which they directly serve with 
terms of comparison. This is out of the usual class- 
book order, but I think the reader will acknowledge 
that the new plan has served a good purpose. 

When we say that Logic is the Science of reason- 
ing, we do not completely understand the definition 
without defining science also. You may say that a 
science is^ knowledge, or many knowledges, about a 
specified object. It is, however, more ; for the man 
who knows most is not thereby the most scientific. 
Long series of disconnected informations do not con- 
stitute a science : they must be ordered in such a 
manner as to be one series systemized for a certain 
purpose ; universal metaphysical principles must un- 
derlie the system as parts of premises^ as general pro- 
positions in which particular are contained ; and the 
growth of science must be by conclusions in reason- 
ing. Science, therefore, is a series of reasonings ; but 
for what purpose ? To give the fullest and clearest 
attainable knowledge of any object considered. There 
is its definition. 

The name of a Science is determined by its object, 
and natural sciences are logical, metaphysical, ethical 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. IO9 

or physical. Some philosophers place the mathe- 
matical in the category ; but the laws of Mathematics 
are only according to Logic, and their application 
mainly according to Physics. The subordinate phy- 
sical sciences are Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology, 
Biology, Physiology, Botany, Mineralogy, &c., and 
are almost without number. 

We do not, I hope, propose to part company at the 
end of Logic ; and it is presumable that we are here 
preparing for an advance in science. Let us, there- 
fore, from an elevation, take a broad, expansive view 
of where we are, what we have traversed, and of what 
lies before us. 

The systemizing of the science of reasoning led us 
to a knowledge of its elements, inasmuch as they are 
radicals, more or less compound, in that science ; also 
to a knowledge of the laws of reasoning ; and to the 
adoption of rules for correct reasoning, the applica- 
tion of which in practice constitutes practical Logic an 
art. We have seen that evidences, upon which judg- 
ments are formed, furnish the sources of all human 
knowledge ; since all knowledges are judgments : and 
that, therefore, the analysis of evidence^ as a means of 
acquiring knowledge conducive to reasoning, properly 
belongs to Logic. In Logic we have studied human 
thought as a means of acquiring the fullest knowledge 
of itself, and of all other objects that we may wish 
hereafter to know ; as a means to make us know, not 
as a thing to be made known to us. Just as Grammar 
is discourse about discoiirse^ as a means to complete 
8 



no ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

knowledge ; so is Logic thought about thought, as a 
means to complete knowledge ; and this is designed 
to give us the best science of our powers, conse- 
quently the best ability to reason upon all things. 

The common catalogue of sciences is large, but 
there is scarcely a limit to the number of possible 
sciences ; and each must rest upon a metaphysical 
basis — must have its own particular metaphysics — 
since no one can advance without universal and neces- 
sary principles. Without these, and ideas conceived 
in, and derived from, the mature intellect, science 
would be disjointed, chimerical, impossible. Such 
ideas as being, substance, quality, "inode, simple, com- 
pound, ca2ise, effect, equality, unity, diversity ; are ne- 
cessary to every mature intellect; derived immedi- 
ately from the interior and not from sensations. 
These are only the remote occasions, not the parents, 
of the ideas, which are innate. As for the metaphy- 
sical principles, such intellectual formulas as the 
expressions of the principles of identity and contra- 
diction ; the zvhole is greater than its part ; things equal 
to the same are equal to one another ; and all other 
axioms; are derived a priori, not from experience; 
and are the broad principles which cover the neces- 
sary relations among all the particulars of sciences; 
are, in short, the foundations upon which science 
starts and which make it everlasting. 

We are now prepared for the broadest possible, the 
philosophic, view of the mental man. We find him 
dwelling amongst his fellow-men, in society, learned 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. Ill 

in sciences, skilled in arts, deft in habits, highly emo- 
tional, aesthetic and useful ; mindful of ancestry and 
provi-dent of posterity. He is endowed with many 
faculties, by the exercise of which he is all this ; and 
the acts of these, singly or combined, in purest sim- 
plicity or greatest complexity, should be character- 
ized by some expression which may be the object of 
scientific investigation. Philosophers, then, have pro- 
perly termed human thought any act, change or modi- 
fication whatever, of the human thinking principle, 
of which it is conscious ; whether such be by knowing, 
willing, desiring, or even feeling. Thought as a 
means we have considered in Logic. What, then, 
would be the science of human thought in its broadest 
possible sense ; considered in its elements compound 
or simple, their natures, and its and their general 
functions and general laws ? The reply to this is 
momentous ; it fixes the centre about which all else 
revolves. 

It is in human thought that all its sciences are cor- 
related ; and that all order, and legislation for all, is 
evolved. What we know naturally of God is accord- 
ing to our conception of the infinite, the necessary, 
the first cause, the eternal, the absolute ; and what we 
know of His supernatural revelations is according to 
our conception of the relations of man to God. The 
whole science, then, of Theology, natural and revealed, 
is correlated with other sciences and knowledges in 
human thought, and is subject to its legislation. 
There is, therefore, one supreme and sovereign 



112 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

science correlating and governing all others, a science 
of sciences^ and this science is Philosophy. 

We have not yet completed the definition. As far 
as Philosophy is the science of human sciences, it is 
purely speculative, intellectual ; and the conception 
of it is the theoretical science of human knowledge. 
Man, however, wills and operates, as well as knows ; 
and, by acts, habits and education, becomes a master 
of arts as well as of sciences ; for the good and the 
elevation of himself and his species. All these taken 
together are the products of the human thought in 
willing and knowing. Practical Philosophy must, 
therefore, be united to theoretical to constitute the 
science of human thought in its entirety. Philosophy 
entire. Philosophy, then, is defined broadly the science 
of human thought. It is worth your while to pause 
and reflect upon this definition. There is one abso- 
lute and necessary Being, one created Universe, one 
system of parts, one specific human thought to con- 
ceive all, and one specific human will to operate in 
correspondence with it. All the ideas that we have ; 
whether Ontological^ as substance^ quality^ cause y. effect^ 
or other necessary ideas ; Cosmological, or such as the 
conception of the Physical Universe contains ; Theolo- 
gical, or Physical; all form parts of the subordinate 
sciences correlated in human thought and moving 
human will. This Philosophy entire examines the 
systems and laws of all sciences and, in its sove- 
reignty, exercises supreme legislation over all. The 
explanation, soon to follow, of the status of Philo- 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. II3 

sophy in modern times, will make these conceptions 
still clearer to you. Many definitions have been given 
of this grand word, and the broadest is that which 
expresses it as being the science of whatever is. Broad 
as is our own, this is broader still ; and the question 
is overlooked as to what kind of science, whether 
human or super-human, can embrace whatever is. 
Philosophy is only human science ; and in the infinite 
mind of God alone is there a science of whatever is ; 
but language has no name for, and human thought 
no powers adequate to, such science. Philosophy is 
according to human thought, and all-comprehensive 
according to human thought. All mental habits ; all 
arts and sciences attainable ; are the products of human 
thought by means of knowledge and will ; and they 
are its natural limitation. The science of that thought 
in its entire latitude, as to all that it can know and 
will, is, in this natural life, our utmost science. Philo- 
sophy is therefore properly defined the science of human 
thought. 

There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as mental 
Philosophy , as a species of Philosophies ; nor natural 
Philosophy, nor any other Philosophy characterized by 
particular objects of scientific pursuit. These are 
sciences only, and we should not make confusion of 
terms. 

Our definition does not correspond with the ancient, 
nor with the commonly-received, definitions of Philo- 
sophy ; and the reason is soon explained. Philosophy 
is on a new basis, and one that the common mind has 



114 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

not comprehended. It is natural for this to assume 
that its ideas have an objective value; that they are 
not only subjective, but that they are really worth 
something, and that they refer to corresponding ex- 
istences out of the mind. The older systems of Phi- 
losophy hkewise took for granted the objectivity of 
ideas, and they were what is properly termed systems 
of objective Philosophy. Doubt, however, in more 
recent times ; both the philosophic, methodical doubt 
of Des Cartes, and the skeptical doubt of Hume and 
Kant; has repulsed asserting dogmatism absolutely, 
discharged realities from ideas until proved, and forced 
Philosophy into criticism^ taking nothing for granted. 

For fear that the expression methodical doubt may 
not be comprehended, I shall explain it. Des Cartes 
was not skeptical, but he properly reasoned that Phi- 
losophy should not assume anything not reasoned out 
or experienced ; and he affected a doubt of the reality 
of his existence, as a method of reaching a proper 
foundation. This he believed he found in his actual 
experience of his thoughts ; and from their reality he 
deduced his own. That this process was a begging 
of the question it is scarcely necessary to say. His 
method, however, of raising a philosophic doubt about 
everything not proved or experienced by primitive ex- 
perience, is correct. Philosophy is exacting and free, 
and we must start upon an absolutely sufficient ex- 
perienced basis, not an intellectual formula, to erect 
a structure of certainty and reality. 

If we start by yielding that corresponding realities 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. II5 

do not belong to ideas until proved, we start in sub- 
jective Philosophy; in the realm of the exclusively- 
ideal ; and you may naturally ask : how will we ever 
find our way out? If we do not find our way out, 
we must remain disciples in the '^ Transcendental" 
school of Kant ; skeptics ; — but these we do not pro- 
pose to be. We must, however, find a sufficient basis 
for objectiveness, because we cannot assume it. This is 
not found in the senses, for we know that they deceive 
when not rationally governed. A sufficient basis 
of experience, however, we shall find, and one that 
every skeptic does, and must, acknowledge in reality, 
even when he denies it in words. Skepticism abso- 
lute is an impossibility, and when men avow it they 
avow a falsity ; because no dogmatism whatever, not 
the slightest or first act of it, is compatible with abso- 
lute skepticism ; any dogmatism excludes it : yet 
every skeptic does, and must, dogmatize, when he 
speaks of his self, his thought, his denial, or even his 
doubt. He assumes the reality of that something, and 
of something else that is thought about it. 

To ask the question : Does hujnan thought corres- 
pond to any reality outside of it ; or is it actually, and 
as to all its value, entirely subjective ? and to ask it in 
sincerity and earnestness ; would be to stand, like a 
statue, unable to stir, fettered, as to movement, by all- 
comprehensive doubt. If such a doubt could be, no 
effort, nor repeated efforts, could move forward, in the 
slightest degree, the frozen Intellect. To a mind 
enchained by such a doubt there could be no Philo- 



Il6 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

sophy, no science ; for such a doubt in the Intellect 
would be a void, a nothing in the Intellect, a suspen- 
sion and temporary death. Yet does the self-styled 
skeptic contradict himself; for, whilst he asserts that 
all things are in the utter darkness of uncertainty, the 
nothingness of unreality, he dogmatizes as to the 
reality of an intelligence that knows it ; he supposes 
an illumination shining singly in the darkness, and a 
flame that illuminates. He supposes the reality of the 
self tha.t thinks, that asserts, and that experiences the 
doubt. This experience of the reality of self in self- 
consciousness : of self that experiences a non-self at 
every sensation ; that experiences the existence of, the 
quality of, and the immediate revelations of, the pri- 
mary faculties ; is then virtually acknowledged by all 
who think, be they men, philosophers or skeptics. 
These are the inmost, primitive and radical expe- 
riences, revealing the first objects for analysis. They 
are the indemonstrable basis of a true Philosophy; 
and consciousness is the portal through which we pass 
from the realm of the exclusively ideal to that of the 
real. Consciousness is the plainest and clearest of all 
natural facts ; at the same time the most wonderful 
and incomprehensible of natural mysteries; depend- 
ing upon whether it be viewed by the common, or 
reflexly by the philosophic, mind : and meditation 
upon it, as applied to self^ raises the intellect higher 
towards a conception of what is spiritual and outside 
of the order of time. Reflex mediate consciousness 
links the soul to all outside of it, and is the means 



DIVISIONAND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. 11/ 

ordained by Infinite Wisdom to place the soul in com- 
munication with the real universe. Such a means 
could have been conceived only by the Infinite. 

There is but one Philosophy and no subordinate 
Philosophies; only parts and subordinate sciences. 
The subordinate sciences are all sciences. Highest 
among these is one that is purely and exclusively 
mental ; and which includes, as parts, all purely 
mental sciences. This is Metaphysics. What is 
meant by purely mental sciences are those whose 
characteristic objects are presented by the interior 
faculties, and not by the external senses. These pre- 
sent the objects of physical sciences ; those the objects 
of metaphysical sciences ; and which are the nobler 
you may discern by this distinction. Metaphysics 
was formerly defined scientia rerum per caiisas — the 
science of things by their causes ; but this was under 
the reign of exclusively objective Philosophy. Criti- 
cism has since aflforded a truer definition, of which we 
shall follow the genesis. Logic was seen to be the 
first of all sciences in order of learning, since it 
prepares the mind, as an instrument, for acquisition 
of sciences. It is, itself, a science of the faculties, 
exterior and interior, in a certain line of operation, 
with ideas as the ultimate element ; and Metaphysics 
carries on the work there begun, but in a broader 
way, towards the perfectioning of it. It takes these 
ultimate elements ideas and investigates their S2ibject, 
their fonnatio^i^ their nature^ their origin^ and their 
value. This is the proper function of Metaphysics. 



Il8 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

Our ideas, however, are all derived through the 
activity of the faculties, and the science of the facul- 
ties will afford us a knowledge of the nature of their 
products. The investigation of the subject of our 
ideas and faculties involves that of the nature and 
natural destiny of it. This subject is the soul ; and 
the science of its faculties, nature, and natural destiny 
is Psychology. The exploration of the sources 
whence comes the material upon which the activity 
of the faculties is expended, and of the mode in which 
that activity is exerted in elaborating ideas, is in the 
science of Ideology, whose object is the origin and 
formation of ideas. Psychology and Ideology are, 
therefore, the parts of Metaphysics, which is defined 
the science of the human soul and its faculties^ and of 
the origin^ formation and 7iature of ideas. 

It is now understood why we have not included 
in Metaphysics its commonly-accepted subordinate 
sciences of Ontology, Cosmology and Natural Theo- 
logy. These are objective sciences, and their realities 
are assumed against the protest of subjective Philo- 
sophy, which can consider only human thought. In 
Ontology we are confined to such ideas as are neces- 
sary to the human understanding; like substance ^ 
quality^ cause ^ effect, time, space, finite, infinite, &c., and 
we ask, what is the origin, the nature, and the real value, 
of these ideas? It is, therefore, plain that Ontology is 
a part of Ideology. 

These ideas compared lead us to the conception of 
Being necessary, absolute and infinite, the First Cause 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. IIQ 

and Creator of realities, which becomes the object of 
the science of Natural Theology. 

The conception of created realities is applied by- 
thought to the visible Universe ; and the conception 
of the Universe, with all that is contained in that con- 
ception, enters likewise, as a part, into Ideology. This 
science is Cosmolosrv. 

In all of these three parts the most important con- 
sideration is that which determines the value of the 
ideas. Have they an objective value, or have they 
not? This is the momentous question, the question 
upon which are divided idealists^ skeptics, on the one 
side ; and realists, philosophers, on the other. 

Most ideas are wrought by attention to, and reflec- 
tion upon, our sensations ; but all innate ideas are 
born of meditation upon universal ideas ; and it is im- 
possible to say at what period precisely the young 
intellect begins to meditate upon universal ideas ; 
begins to brood. Some innate ideas are subjective as 
to their origin, formation and value ; like equality, 
which corresponds to no real object in nature, being 
only a logical conception ; and others are subjective as 
to their origin and formation only ; being objective as 
to their value ; and corresponding to realities. Prin- 
cipal among the latter, and somewhat according to 
the chronological order of their birth (differing per- 
haps in different individuals), are substance, quality, 
unity, divej'sity, number, extension, action, passion, power, 
place, time, space, cause and effect. To these must 
succeed, as ideas necessary to more complete intel- 



I20 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

lect : finite^ infinite^ absolute and spirit. I have placed 
spirit last, because the necessity for, and the reality of, 
its idea are disputed most by men of scientific learn- 
ing. To many intellects, however, owing to their 
greater completeness, the necessary idea of spirit is 
more constantly present as real, than perhaps any 
other; because it is the idea of self y th.^ pereeiving and 
th^ first perceived ; the first idea completed by analysis, 
and one which accompanies, in such intellects, almost 
every reflex thought. 

The universal and necessary ideas enumerated 
above are amongst those placed, by ancient and 
modern metaphysicians, in those summa genera^ the 
Predicables and the Categories or the Predicamenta, 
With them the common mind is familiar, but it only 
refers them to its accidental or uniform observations, 
instead of referring all its observations to them. Its 
conception of them is most common-place, and does 
not engender those profound reflections and feelings 
by which the philosophic mind is overpowered, in its 
contemplative visions of them. So is it with the 
common mind's observation of self conscious of self 
and non-self ; it observes in this only a crude, unpic- 
turesque home of its thoughts and feelings ; whilst 
the metaphysical mind has, in that observation, an 
experience which, when analyzed, corresponds with its 
conception of that metaphysical mystery, spirit. The 
common mind's conceptions of astronomical pheno- 
mena are common-place ; and it refers the stars and 
the sun to the earth as principal, instead of the earth 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. 121 

to the sun, and both to the starry Universe as sunt' 
mum genus. Of what is so familiar and so adequately 
understood (according to conceit) no analysis is made. 
As common-place and as reversed in order are the 
conceptions of the cultured but unmetaphysical mind, 
oi self-consciousness and of the universals of the Cate- 
gories, with which it is most familiar, and which it 
understands so well ; but before which the most tow- 
ering metaphysical intellect bends and confesses its 
littleness, awed by the stupendous validity of its own 
innate conceptions. 

The accidental ideas of the intellect are past count- 
ing; and any science of them, except as to the forma- 
tive process of them, is not ideological. We shall 
therefore see, in due time. Ideology let drop all but 
the few ideas necessary to intellects more or less com- 
plete ; and these, with their origin, formation and 
value, it will systemize as its characteristic objects. 
These are all uitiversal ideas of universals ; and the 
human intellect, passing through the lower stages of 
infancy, childhood and mere maturity; then over the 
higher graduated planes of observation, culture and 
expansion ; from time to time gives them birth from 
its interior meditation. In the mind of the Omni- 
scient Creator of all things, before all things were, 
first, in the order of knowledge (to speak humanly) 
were the possibles and the universals. Classification, 
species diwA pai^ictdars, came next; last of all, the facts 
of the human faculties and the revelation of them to 
man's self hy consciousness. In the mind of created 



122 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

man this order is reversed. In his order of know- 
ledge come, first, the solitary fact of self-consciousness ; 
then the primitive facts of his internal experience ; 
next the remoter facts of his external observation, 
particulars ; then, by classification, their species. So, 
rising by gradations as he expands, he reaches finally 
the Generic, the Universal, the Categories and the Pos- 
sible. The poetry of Metaphysics begins to thrill 
as the intellect feels its own innate, expansive, 
powers lifting it, higher and higher, among those 
Transcendent Universals whose realities were coeval 
with the inception of the Universe ; or which, like 
Substance, Infinite, Absolute, ante-dated even Time and 
Space, real and unconditioned, without beginning. 
Sublimated thenceforth, towards this realm of Uni- 
versals is the soul for ever yearning ; towards it ever 
tending; enamoured of its reality and truth; and the 
grandest of souls are those that dwell therein, rapt in 
a contemplation that desires no end. 

When once evolved and clear, Objective Philosophy 
is the truly transcendental ; since the real transcends 
the mere ideal ; since God, His System with its con- 
ditions, and His Creation, transcend infinitely noth- 
ingness. 

Many philosophers improperly exclude Physics 
from the scope of Philosophy ; and some most emi- 
nent physicists, puzzled and baffled at the overlapping 
of Physics by Metaphysics, have endeavored to extri- 
cate it. So, attempting to explain all by physical 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. I 23 

conceptions and misconceived induction, they have 
failed in the attempt, and have sacrificed the knowable 
to the purely conjectural. Post hoc and propter hoc 
they have linked together with the formal is^ creating 
a physical judgment, that is not a priori and that has 
but a mean empirical support ; to supplant the meta- 
physical law of cause and effect : thus referring prin- 
ciples to things, instead of things to principles. And, 
under the afflatus oi induction^ they worship before an 
original of their own creation, as a potency, an idol, 
not as a true image of the unseen : prostrate, they 
bend before the golden calf in the valley, not discern- 
ing the tablets of the law on the Mount. 

The laws of Physics are fixed, and canaot be other- 
wise than subordinate to the a prion principles of 
Metaphysics. The part of a rock cannot be as great 
as the whole rock ; nor can a rock be and not be at 
the same time. The shortest road between two points 
must be a straight road ; and the shortest wall to 
enclose a given area of ground must be a circular wall. 
Physics entire is based upon the metaphysical concep- 
tions of substance and quality, and supposes the meta- 
physical law of cause and effect ; and all its laws are 
correlated in human thought with other laws, whilst 
practical thought supplies the data and material for 
their application. The division, then, is wrong which 
excludes Physics from Philosophy. The physical 
sciences, however, are so many that a philosophic 
summa would embrace all true books of science, art, 



124 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

morals, poetry, music, beauty and utility that have 
been, or ever will be, written. 

Science belongs to Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, 
Physics and Philosophy; wisdom only to Philo- 
sophy. 

In the treatment of Logic I have not adopted the 
analytical method, as applied to the whole, or as 
applied to a general plan of Philosophy; only as 
applied to the particular parts. The general method 
is synthetical. A treatment of the entire science 
according to strict analysis would commence with the 
primary fact of self conscious of self and non-self^ 
From this, the clearest known of all facts, it would 
pass to the constant experience of reasoning, the com- 
pletest object of Logical Science ; thence to its most 
compound elements, and ending with the simplest, the 
idea. The progress would be always from the known 
to the discovery of the unknown. Since, how^ever, in 
the beginning, students are not supposed to know of 
the existence, to say nothing of the nature, of critical 
Philosophy ; and, without hesitancy, concede to their 
ideas the objective value which really belongs to 
them ; it was thought well to take advantage of this 
concession, in order to not introduce methodical doubt 
to minds not prepared to grapple with it. Now, how- 
ever, it is understood ; we can suppose doubt when- 
ever it suits our purpose ; and it becomes Philosophy 
to doubt all that is not from correct reason or from 
fundamental experience. Where these are not, dcubt 



DIVISION AND DEFINITION OF SCIENCES. 1 25 

becomes stagnant skepticism, and has no scientific 
status. 

The point of contact where Subjective Philosophy 
touches Objective Philosophy has been discovered; 
since both are seen to rest upon the same primitive 
basis of expenence by coitsciousness : that upon the ex- 
perience of ^^^ modified by reasoning; this upon the 
experience of 5"^^ modified by what is not self That 
experience reveals action; this experience reveals /^.y- 
sion. That experience reveals tinity ; this experience 
r^y^diXs phcrality ; and upon this difference Philosophy 
has been illogically made two by separation ; the so- 
called "Transcendental" claiming the right to be 
exclusive. Now nothing less than the self-sufficing 
knowledge of God can underlie the actual two-fold 
experience of consciousness as an ultimate, self-suffic- 
ing basis ; and this two-fold experience must be the 
penultimate, the common basis of both Systems ; 
hence the claim of "Transcendentalism" to exclude 
"Realism" is a pure assumption against reason, and 
is void. We are more logical and more tolerant ; we 
admit the whole ideal that is rational, but we cannot 
allow it to expel the real to which it is tivin. The 
error is in excluding either, and it is gratuitous. 

At last we are free from the machinery of Logic, 

through the intricacies of which analysis conducted 

us. We desire to proceed ; and to do this we must 

avoid all narrow views, especially the confined mental 

9 



126 ELEMENTARY PHILOSOPHY. 

grooves of Mathematics, where equivalents pursue each 
other, round and round, in never-ending circles. The 
code of a priori truths must be in hand for reference ; 
and, with broadest Observation for our guide, the 
whole Empire of Thought will be before us. 



END OF PART !• 



